Bones beneath her feet
by orlha
Summary: She had died only to be reborn into this world as Kakashi's younger sister. The world where peace was a mockery and the hopes and dreams of their children living their lives out was a big sham. Perhaps this was her penitence and retribution. SI-OC.
1. Waking up: Part 1

She is standing in the kitchen, left hand holding the pan, right hand stirring the eggplant when something in her shifts. Her feet are bare on the warm wooden floor, Mr Ukki flutters his leaves in the too-warm breeze on the window sill, there is a presence behind her on the couch that is familiar to her ( _how does she know him?_ ), a dog dozing by her foot that she dimly recognizes and how she knows all this, she isn't sure.

She blinks. Fingers gripping tightly on the pair of chopsticks in her hand as she tries to figure out who, where and how. The tub, she was sitting in the tub, it was winter, she had been, had been…

"Imouto?" The familiar presence has moved to behind her.

She spins around instinctively, in a movement that she _knew_ she couldn't have done, she strikes the chopsticks downward, jugular vein or should have been had the man not caught her wrist and held her in a way that constricted her movements entirely.

"You're in Konoha, it is seven pm, eighth September. You were making dinner. Everything is fine. You are safe," he says and repeats it again and again. She tries to take a breath, her lungs are burning for air. She remembers this sensation before she died. She should be dead ( _dead dead dead_ ) and this isn't even her apartment.

"Take a deep breath with me," he says. She feels his chest behind her heave a slow, long breath. She tries a few times, eventually catches it. He doesn't ask if she's okay, his motions are too practiced for _this_ to be a new thing. Taking the chopsticks from her limp hand, he clicks the stove off.

"The eggplant is burnt," he says mournfully as he plates it out.

"B-be glad you even have eggplant!" she tosses back and chucks a cup at him that he catches from mid-air.

"But it's eggplant-" he whines.

She scoops the rice out from the cooker, setting the bowls of rice and pickles down on the dinner table. "We always eat eggplant anyway. I want yakiniku tomorrow."

He gives her a mock-betrayed look before sliding the mask off his face to eat. She freezes, her mind finally catching up with her - with the situation. "Kakashi?" she splutters. She's been bickering with a man she didn't know ( _how does she know his name?_ ), not really at least. Her mind helpfully offers memories of her and _nii-san_ and other memories of people she shouldn't ( _didn't_ ) know of.

The silver haired man looks up from his food, a look of concern crosses his face. She _knows_ this man, she knows where everything is without a conscious thought but who and why is she here?

Her name. What _is_ her name?

She pushes from the table, staring at her hands. These weren't her hands. Hers weren't this calloused _. (Pale, soft, weak hands. Sick, always sick. Always needed help._ )

"Imouto?"

There is strength in her body, lithely built just like the man in front of her ( _nii-san_ ), she knows she can clear the room in less than a second, tumble from the fourth floor with little ( _none at all_ ) injuries. This isn't her body ( _yes it is_ ), she turns her head just a fraction to catch a glimpse of her distorted reflection in the dark windows. The silver hair that sprawls down her back ( _just tou-san and nii-san_ ) couldn't belong to her. She had dark brown hair, hair so dark that it was almost black like the night.

"Imouto!" Kakashi hovers near her, his unmasked face broadcasting his emotions. Now she knows why he always masked his face. ( _Masked? Why would she think of him masking his face?_ ) "Hatake Fuuko! Report!" he calls out in a commanding voice, her body snaps to attention unconsciously; there is loathing in his voice that belies the blankness in his face.

Her body takes over before her mind can process the words spilling from her mouth. "At nineteen hours today, I found myself in unknown territory. Orders unknown, location unknown. Attempted to discern location and was approached by unknown… known ally. Body not... belonging…" She falters off, the rest of the words stilling in her mouth. Body not hers? A frisson of fear runs through her as she takes in the mutinous look in the man's face ( _nii-san, not the man)_.

 _The searing heat was grinding her organs to death. Fuuko tried to breathe. Her mouth opening and closing in an imitation of a goldfish. Her lungs burnt, her throat burnt. She was dying._

 _Save me._

 _Someone save me._

 _Panic clawed up her throat as she felt herself fade into nothingness._

 _So this is how it ends. The mighty Lightning of Konoha, in the lab of a missing-nin._

"I…" she starts in a tremulous tone. "I need air." She spins around, leaping over and out of the window. Her body already shifting itself into a perfect bounce off the opposite building and up the wall ( _how am I running on walls?_ ), she leaps off the rooftops with ease and is entirely baffled how it easily it comes to her. Her body is moving so smoothly and nothing, except the cold stone in her chest, hurts.

She takes gulps of the warm night air, finally stopping at the edge of a forest, on the docks. "I am Fuuko. Hatake Fuuko," she tests the words on her tongue. The strange blend of familiarity and callowness whelms up in her throat. The longer she explores it, the stranger it feels, like she didn't belong. She really _didn't_ belong after all. Dying in the bathtub had been her last _then_ memory, being so sick that she rolled around in a wheelchair had been also part of her _then_ memories. Was she a body snatcher? Had she stolen someone's body? She raised her hand against the slowly rising moon, eyes tracing out the multiple scars and callouses across her hand ( _a shinobi's hand_ ), her mind offered again, knowledge that she didn't know how or where she got them from. The pool of memories that seemed to assure that it was hers ( _or was it the body's memories?_ ), didn't feel like hers. How had she gotten here? If she had died and was reborn again, then why had she remembered now?

She runs a frustrated hand through her hair and sinks to the ground, her body instinctively crossing her legs into a sitting lotus style.

"I am Hatake Fuuko," she says slowly into the silence. Not even the sound of the leaves rustling could be heard. No, she's not. She's an imposter in the body of Hatake Fuuko, in a body that she's always dreamed to have. "I…" she trails off, trying to fit her mind around being in a body that isn't hers, "don't belong here." She closes her eyes, trying to calm her whirling thoughts. The memories ( _of the body_ ) instruct her to reach deep inside her, past her frantic beating heart and deep inside _her._ A warm reassuring fluttering in her mental hands like sunlight on a cold summer's day.

( _Chakra_ )

What is Chakra, she asks. Her body feeds her memories of chakra control exercises with nii-san and an older woman with the same spiky silver hair, playing tag across the walls and ceiling with nii-san and tou-san.

Quiet serenity fills her as she processes the memories. Hatake Fuuko was loved unlike the her before then, loved and cherished despite the choice of her profession. She opens her eyes, leaning over the water's edge, taking the first clear look of herself.

Spiky silver hair that look untamed though she knew was due to her lightning affinity, dark grey eyes, sharp cheekbones. Not traditionally pretty in the civilian way, she is pretty in her own striking way. Something nudged at her memories. As she tried to pull the memory out, she senses the presence of a person to her left, a steady, calm presence like a full moon on a winter's night very unlike the man in the apartment she ran from. Perhaps that person has been there for awhile. Probably following her since she left the place, he always have been good at hiding his presence.

"Fuuko-san," he calls out. She stands, dark hair tied at the base of his skull. Red eyes almost luminous in the dark.

"Itachi-kun," her mouth replies automatically. Uchiha Itachi that graduated at the age of seven. Uchiha Itachi. Uchiha? Her eyes shot up to the red eyes, the three black tomoe spinning lazily around the red iris. That was the Sharingan.

Fuck, she was in Narutoverse. She looked at her reflection again.

 _Nii-san was watching her from the bed across the room. "It's okay," he whispered and stretched out to hold her hand. "tou-san is strong. He's the White Fang of Konoha."_

 _He raised his hand out to the ceiling in the darkness as though reaching out to something, his hand fisting. "One day I'll be strong like tou-san, then imouto will never need to worry."_

Her brother is Kakashi, Hatake Kakashi.

She remembers a lifetime of reading them obsessively, dreaming of the things she could have done if she had just a smidge of their power, if the medicine in _that_ world was anything close to the Narutoverse's world.

Itachi cups her elbow. The look in his eyes questions if she's okay. The sharingan in his eyes are gone, replaced by dark onyx eyes and furrowed eyebrows.

Well, at least it is Kakashi, it could have been worse, she tries to comfort herself. Could have been a no name in this universe, she glances at Itachi who has come to stand silently beside her, could have been an Uchiha. She winces at her thoughts.

If Itachi is still here in Konoha, then… She wonders if she should try to change it.

She remembers pottering about on her wheelchair, the helplessness as her illness worsened. She remembers terrifying fear of being useless, the fact that she knew she was nothing but a burden. Even amidst the memories of _this_ life, she remembers the need to not be useless. Now in her hands, she could do something. She already has died once, there is nothing scary about death once you faced it.

She draws memories of Itachi. Itachi who watched her back in the squad, Itachi who shared his dango ( _reluctantly_ ) with her. She draws the snark that she once wielded as an armor in her past life and wraps it tightly around her.

His lips are pursed when she finally turns to him. A weird incontinent display of emotions that she only remembers ( _or at least her body does_ ) seeing on Shisui.

"I apologise," he says simply. Though his posture does not change, she senses an odd sag in his demeanor and how she can't really tell but she can see that whatever that floats in his mind, weighs him.

"There is nothing to apologise," she tells him, puzzled. Her body's memories are not bringing anything that he should be sorry for.

Itachi clenches his jaw, chin working under the weight of the things he wanted to say. "If I had gone for the mission…" he starts out, his eyes searching her face for signs that he is saying too much. "... then the events that landed you in _his_ hands would not have happened."

( _don't think about it, don't think about it_ )

She takes a slow breath and pats him on the shoulder. "All the things said and done, are done. Nii-san must be waiting for me."

She gives him a familiar wag of fingers and shunshins away.

 **A/N:** Ugh, I said I wouldn't update here, but oh wells. I wrote an OC story!? That's really different. This has to be my first OC story in... a very long time. Hope you liked it or will like it.


	2. Waking up: Part 2

Kakashi forces himself to sit still when he feels her chakra return. It's not the first time since she returned that he wonders what happened in the labs. Does he want to know? Kakashi isn't sure he does. Minato once said that to scout the enemy instead of pretending they don't exist, but he also knows that there is no going back once he knows everything.

Even with the hints of it, the alarming report that his sister had given his mind enough fuel to guess.

 _Body not... belonging_

Not belonging? Whose body, belonging to who? He turns a page of his novel, not really reading it. Shisui would know, or he might. He would have a better guess of what those words might mean.

The loathing curdles in the pit of his stomach. He remembers being sent out for backup for his sister's squad. The mission that should have been his squad's was reassigned to Fuuko when he accidentally broke his arm. He wonders if she blames him. She would not have lost her squad leader, would not have to feel the loss of another teammate had he had gone for that mission.

"Nii-san?" she hovers behind him. The way she calls him is different, like she's trying to fit names to an image. Kakashi pushes his doubts away. After all that she's gone through, the one thing he can do is make sure that he's there for her, just like she was there for him.

"Maa... I ate all the eggplant already, and rice."

"Nii- _saan_..." she pouts at him.

"You didn't want the eggplant anyway. _We always eat eggplant anyway_ ," he mimics her voice.

"At least leave the rice for me! And pickles!" Kakashi can see from the corner of his eyes that in spite of her light tone, there is a strange light in her eyes. Itachi's chakra pulses lightly and he motions ' _later'_ to Itachi when Fuuko turns to the fridge.

"There's the leftover katsudon," he drawls, coming up behind her.

She sighs and takes it out anyway. He was going to drag her out to the yakiniku restaurant, he knew that nothing fixes his sister up better than a full course yakiniku platter. Except judging by her demeanour and Itachi hovering about in the shadows, he wasn't going to risk it.

 _'Just go slowly with her,'_ he mumbles inaudibly under his breath, reminding himself of the medic's words. Like that's so easy.

Kakashi waves at her, pretending to be engrossed in his book but really tracking her chakra across the apartment, watching it until it fades into a sleepy pulse.

Itachi sits across him. "She didn't detect my presence until I let her detect," he starts and that's really all Kakashi needs to know. His sister is one of the best chakra sensors around that not even Itachi or Tenzo can hide from her.

"Just go slowly with her," he reminds the crestfallen Uchiha, because that is all they can do for her.

\W/ \W/ \W/

 _"Tou-san! Imouto! Look!" he burst into the house, the house was far unnaturally dark. "Tou-san? Imouto?" The metallic smell savaged his nose as he stepped into the pitch black house._

'Oh kami, not my house, _' he reiterated to himself, forcing his legs to take him past the genkan. He heard of one of the Uchiha houses that had been hit by enemy-nins that had managed to get past the village's defences. Tou-san was supposed to be here, tou-san would have destroyed them easily._

 _"Tou-san," he called out again, choking on the smell of blood. Maybe it's the enemy-nins that tou-san killed, he told himself, trying to comfort himself from the terrifying images of seeing his two year old sister dead, because that seemed like the only plausible explanation._

 _Channelling some chakra into his eyes, he stopped at the edge of the living room. Kakashi could feel his mind slip, his world tilting on its axis as he tried to process what he was seeing. His father sprawled on the floor, blood bleeding into the tatami mats could only belong to one._

 _"Tou-san!" he stepped towards Sakumo,_ _the thick viscous liquid beneath his ninja sandal causing him to slip. His heart threatening to burst from his chest as he crawled to the older silver-haired man. He tried so hard to get tou-san to look at them again, tried to pull him out._

 _Was he not good enough? Was he not good enough for him to come back out? Why had he left him?_

 _Kakashi tilted his face up, the more he tried to stop the tears, the more they persisted._

 _"Kakashi-kun?" the baritone called from the doorway._

 _Minato-sensei, he had forgotten he was supposed to meet sensei._

 _He heard sensei swear and shunshin-ed towards him. "What happened?"_

 _"I wasn't good enough," he replied, holding tightly onto the cold body. "Not good enough." He swallowed dryly, scrubbing the tears away, ignoring the flare of chakra from Sensei and the other approaching chakra source._

 _"Kakashi-kun," Minato said gently, crouching by him. "Come, let Kushina deal with this, okay?" He peeled Kakashi's hands from the body, hoisting him up into his arms. Kakashi would have been outraged for being treated like a kid but he couldn't find the energy to care, instead he listed against him, taking comfort in the warm source._

 _"Where is imouto?" he asked the blond jounin._

 _The jounin froze, then flipped hand seals as he swore. "Gamata, find Fuuko-chan."_

 _The frog bounded away and stopped. "Minato, she's under the couch."_

 _Minato placed him down. Lying flat on the ground, he reached out for Fuuko. Kakashi could hear her crying. "Fuuko-chan, it's me. Remember me? Mii-chi? I have your nii-san here with me."_

 _He really was turning out to be a shitty nii-san, wasn't he? Kakashi forced the thought down, compelling his legs to kneel beside Minato. With the chakra enhanced eyesight, he could make out the streaks of dried blood across her face. How long had she been stuck in the room with… with their father?_

 _Minato carefully pushed the couch up and pulled her towards them. She held her hands out to him, her tiny hands curling tightly his bloodied shirt. "I'm here imouto," he said, gripping her tightly. She was all he had left. Noujou-oba was dead, Kouuki-kun was dead and now their father dead._

 _If there was a god listening, please don't let him lose her as well._

\W/ \W/ \W/

Kakashi wakes with a sudden alertness, his body still pliant, heart beating slowly in a imitation of being asleep. Why had he woken? Admittedly the dream had been one of his most horrible memories, but still… He casts his senses out, searching for the threat his consciousness had pegged and groans. "Damnit Shisui." Choosing to ignore the Uchiha lurking in his apartment for now, the elder Hatake drags his shirt over his face and plods into the bathroom. He pauses outside his sister's room, toothbrush in his mouth and stares at her sleeping form.

'She's alive. Traumatized but alive,' he tells himself. Wouldn't be the first time they had a trauma. They always work through it. He remembers Obito and Rin, remembers how she followed him into ANBU after Minato's death.

 _Imouto._

He sits on the edge of her bed, hand twitching in the want to touch her to assure himself. She breathes slow and easy, her guard entirely let down. Not common but it worries him anyway. The cold drip of his toothpaste dribbling on his hand snaps him from further thoughts and he shunshins back to the bathroom to rinse his mouth.

 _Why are you here so early?_ He signs to the black haired boy standing in his kitchen.

"Breakfast," he grins, motioning to the fishes on grill. Kakashi would nag at Shisui for doing morning training despite the medic's words except who is he to say that? He's infamous for escaping hospitals after all. Shisui stretches his left arm carefully, rotating it around a few times. "It'll be fine by the week's end," Shisui tells him. "Watch the fish! I'm going to wake Fuu-chan~!"

Kakashi grabs him by the collar before he can even flounce towards his sister's room. "Imouto is currently sleeping," he says through clenched teeth. "I would appreciate if a _young man_ like you to not go into a girl's room - _my imouto's_ room especially while she's sleeping."

Shisui sulks. "But Kakashi-sempai! We sleep together anyway when you're not around."

His lip twitches Shisui's words and tightens his grip around Shisui's raised collared shirt. "Shisui, be careful. Or I might accidentally kill* you with water. I might actually do it anyway." Kakashi gives him a single eye crinkle, making sure his killer intent is extra potent.

He gulps audibly, drops of sweat beading on his forehead. "Mou- Kakashi-sempai! You know I don't mean that kind of _sleeping together_." Kakashi's hand spasms at his last two words, tightening the collar around Shisui's neck. "C-can't breathe-" Shisui gasps.

"Nii-san, stop manhandling my squad mate."

"But he was talking bad about you!" Kakashi whines, reluctantly dropping Shisui when she frowns at him.

"But he was telling the truth…" She taps her bottom lip thoughtfully. "There was also that one time where we had to sleep naked together with our sleep rolls wrapped around us. We were caught in a snowstorm, wasn't it?"

His single eye twitches and before he can grab hold of Shisui again, he zips behind her. "Please don't tell your brother that while I'm here. We didn't do anything! It was just conserving heat!"

"But it was funny." She brushes past Kakashi and dishes the food out, sitting on the chair closest to the kitchen window.

She is sitting on his usual seat, the seat that he had picked (and squabbled over) since they moved into this apartment a decade ago. Kakashi's breath hitches.

 _"We don't know what happened in the lab, Kakashi-san. We have to prepare for the worst."_

He forces himself to sit on the opposite seat, _his sister's seat,_ shovelling the food in his mouth so fast that Shisui has not noticed that he has started eating. Then he stands just as Shisui says itadakimasu, slipping the mask up with an eye smile. "Well then, I have an appointment with my squad."

Kakashi wiggles his fingers in farewell before flickering to the Hokage tower.

It's a horrible theory that he doesn't want to consider, but the longer he observes, the more the theory becomes less of a theory and more of a conclusion. Teammate killer, what would be next? Kin Betrayal?

He forces his steps to be slow and plodding, face immersed in a familiar orange book, his body posture, a model for boredom and insouciance. It isn't his squad that is waiting in the meeting room when he finally makes it there. The Sandaime and Inoichi, the head of T&I, looks up with a weary look.

"Well?" Sandaime asks him.

His sister isn't quite his sister anymore, he thinks though he doesn't vocalise it. He doesn't tell them that his sister might be broken in ways that none of them has considered - he doesn't even want to touch that idea on how with a twelve metre pole. Instead, he shrugs in a perfectly recalcitrant manner and drawls, "Well, Shisui's watching her and Itachi's watching Shisui. Apart from finding out that Shisui slept with my imouto, nothing else has been ground breaking." Even if she's not quite his sister (and he suspects that there's more than just brainwashing), he'll do his best to protect her.

Inoichi chokes at his words and Kakashi can't blame him. The idea of Fuuko naked with Shisui… Kakashi grimaces, then plans to string the Uchiha and set Naruto on him.

 **A/N:**

\- Noujou-obu and Kouuki-kun are both Hatake OCs. There will be further brief mentions of them, but in case anyone actually tries to google who they are. No, they don't exist canonically. Noujou is Sakumo's elder sister while Kouuki is her son.  
\- I'm trying to slowly extend the chapters out, though I'm well aware that by extending it out, I'll be taking a lot longer time per chapter.  
\- I'm embarrassingly shy on responding reviews, I'm sorry if I don't respond to your questions. Not trying to put anyone off on reviewing/commenting, just not sure how to respond. There are a lot of questions right now, but it is just the beginning.

* Shisui can mean Shi - (Dead ,死) and Sui (water, 死) so Kakashi is making a pun on Shisui's name.


	3. Waking up: Part 3

Training with Shisui is a lot harder that Fuuko imagines. Each punch and kick comes with an assault of alternatives, each casual thought is disconcerting fountain of information and knowledge. She wonders if she'll ever become Hatake Fuuko. Her body works fine on autopilot, smoothly dodging and flickering, countering his attacks, but she doesn't feel like she actually belongs when she struggles to assimilate her thoughts into the body's movements. It's suffocating trying to _belong._ Her body feels ill-fitting, like a dress that's too tight. Each spew of memories is smothering, burying her ( _she isn't supposed to exist_ ).

"You're leaving your right side open," Shisui tells her, stopping in front of her. His tanto is held out on his side and he frowns at her.

( _She never leaves her right side open, left but never the right_ )

"Maybe I'll just run through my katas," she says, flicking her kodachi in a practiced move as though there is blood on it ( _there always is blood on her kodachi_ ). She thinks running katas to bridge the fissure between her memories would help, except the look on Shisui's face is strange. Like she's said something wrong. He doesn't stop her, regardless, when she moves to the side to run through her katas.

Her kodachi feels familiar and unfamiliar in her hand. Her body moves effortlessly through the motions ( _actions that would have caused her agony in her then life_ ), even with the thrusting and lunging, her heart barely increases, her breath is even like she's just walking.

( _This is the body of a shinobi. Enduring like the sky itself endures._ )

Her sword swings noiselessly, she flips in midair, letting the act of fighting ( _dancing_ ) wash over her, her movements speeding up with the completion of each set of katas. By the time she's done enough to please her, her muscles are quivering and the early morning sun has turned into a noon sun. Shisui is practicing with Itachi in a training ground close enough for their presence to brush against her sensory range, Kakashi is lounging on a grass patch nearby, reading a very familiar orange book.

"Nii-san," she greets. The words still feel stilted on her tongue no matter how many times she practiced it in her head. He's still _that man_ , that guy from the manga. Even with all the childhood memories that floats up with a thought of him, she still can't erase that part of her.

"Ah. You're done." He arches an eyebrow at her. "Want to get some lunch? I'm thinking of curry rice."

"What! Let's have udon!" Shisui flickering behind her with a fresh bruise on his face. "Tamaki-san makes fantastic tempura udon."

"You're not invited, Shisui," Kakashi grumbles.

Shisui places a hand on his chest, gasping in mock horror. "Rude! For all the things I've done for you-"

"What exactly have you been doing for Kakashi-taichou?" Itachi asks. His eyes hovers on her, another frown at the kodachi in her hand. She was getting tired from all these frowns. They should just say what's on their mind instead of frowning at her, like she's doing something wrong ( _and she probably is, but that's not the point_ ). She glances at the sword in her hand, wondering what exactly she's doing wrong this time.

It hadn't occurred to her this morning, that she had been sitting on Kakashi's seat until much later. Sitting by the window had been a very natural thing for her in her _then_ life. Was anyone looking after Mr Barky? Her cute little fluffy puff, oh how she misses him.

"Fuuko-san?" Itachi calls out in his quiet voice. "Are you feeling well?"

"Nii-san!" The group turns to see a little black haired kid running towards them, hands swinging neatly wrapped packages. "Okaa-san told me to bring you guys bentos."

"Well done, otouto."

Shisui shunshins to Sasuke, grabbing him and swinging him back and forth. "Lunch! Oh Sasuke-chan, you are _such_ a good boy!"

Sasuke struggles for a few moments, pushing Shisui's cheek from his before giving up. "Fuuko-neechannnn…" he whines, blowing his cheeks up in a great pout. "Hellp..."

It felt weird that Sasuke recognised her. How had she known him? Why couldn't she remember anything about him?

"Nee-chaaan!"

She takes an unconscious step back.

( _He'll grow and become a monster. He'll try to destroy Konoha._ ) She remembers him from the manga, the sword he stole from Orochimaru, the sword that he wields as he kills Danzo. They're not memories of this life or that life, but it feels all the same.

Her head throbs the longer she stares at him. The drumming on the sides of her head threatened to explode. Her breath rasps, her shoulders shake.

 _"_ _Wolf, run!"_

 _"_ _Taicho!" She skidded to a stop, bending backwards to dodge his tongue. She flips sideways, narrowly missing his sword._

 _"_ _Run!"_

She turns. She needs to run, run away. She leaps from tree to tree, there isn't any other thought in her mind except the need to run. Where is she running to?

"Fuuko!"

There isn't enough air in the world for her. She's drowning even as she runs across the numerous training fields. Her lungs are burning like she's attempted to transverse Kiri to Konoha in a day. She isn't far enough yet.

"Fuuko! Stop!"

Not safe. Have to get Cat back home, promised Fox. Have to-

She slips. The rays of sun beating against the green leaves, dust motes swaying in its wake. Was this the first time she had seen the sun and leaves since waking? The blue of the sky is almost hypnotic and had it not been for the sharp thud and brief pain in her back, she might not have realised that she had landed on the ground. She's fine, her body had automatically adjusted for a injury-free fall.

Shisui lands beside her, her brother is far behind. She stares at the patch of blue sky, unblinkingly. Shisui has always been the fastest between the four of them.

"Fuuko?" Shisui kneels beside her.

She tilts her head at him, her voice is so low and guttural that it sounds foreign even to her own ears. "Have to get Cat home." She paws at the ground, her body not moving as well as it should ( _chakra strings_ ).

"I'm fine. Cat is fine. Cat is safe," Shisui says, dodging her flailing arms and spinning the strings tighter around her. He pins her to the ground, henging into Cat. "We're safe."

"Have to get Cat home," she insists. Her breath comes out in stuttering gasps as she struggles to get up. His dark eyes flash into red, gleaming, forlorn eyes.

 _"_ _And I asked myself, can a body exist without a soul?"_

"Sleep," he says.

 _"_ _And I said yes."_

Then she welcomes the darkness.

\W/ \W/ \W/

She wakes. The side of her face cold from where it was pressed against the window.

Just a dream.

She shifts the blankets that cover her legs and wheel her chair around to where the fire is. A dream where she could run across the rooftops and soar in the trees, where her body no longer ached with each movement. She raises her hand, her elbow and shoulder protesting at that action. Her hand trembles as she stares at it. Pale, soft, weak hands, just like she remembered. ( _Strong and powerful._ )

Mr Barky looks up as she wheels up beside him, wagging his tail in anticipation for pets. ( _Bakushou raises an ear lazily_ ) She scratches his ear and looks up at the clock. Almost dinner time, should start cooking. She rolls her wheelchair down the hallway, Mr Barky following her, his tail beating a drum beat against the wall.

The bathroom's still lit with a tub full of water. Why it's full? She steers her wheelchair next to the tub. There is a woman lying in the tub. Her dark brown hair floats to the surface of the water. As she leans over to check if the woman's breathing and stops. Her own reflection has silver hair, and dark grey eyes.

( _Just tou-san and nii-san._ )

Beneath the surface of the water, the woman opens her eyes. Her eyes are green and they are so familiar. She opens her mouth, thin lips mouthing the words that flicker across her mind.

( _We are Hatake Fuuko._ )

 _A warmth landed on her head, jolting her out of her thoughts. Kakashi arched an eyebrow at her, his lips quirking upwards. "Yosh, yosh," he said and ruffled her hair._

 _"_ _Why did you do that for?"_

 _"_ _You were having a series of bad thoughts and being your nii-san, I decided to interrupt it." He rubbed his thumb on her nose bridge. "Stop frowning." Kakashi hauled her up and dragged her to the training grounds._

The woman points at Mr Barky sitting by the door, waiting. Getting up, Fuuko followed Bakushou into the dark fields. Above is a red full moon hanging heavily above the horizon, the dark Uchiha grounds surrounds her. There are bodies strewn all over the roads and a person crouches on the top of a electric post, staring down at her.

( _Red, gleaming eyes._ )

She remembers this. Not as a set of memories from either life, but a memory of a story she once read.

( _Never useless again._ )

Everything here isn't real. Not a dream, but a genjutsu. Fuuko takes a last look, committing the scene to memory. It hasn't happened yet and wouldn't happen if she can help it.

She places her fingers into the tiger seal.

"Kai!" ( _Kai_ )

\W/ \W/ \W/

Kakashi and Shisui are hunched beside her when she wakes.

"How long was I out?" Her tongue feels thick and languid in her mouth, like she's been days without water and her voice has a chafe that sounds painful even if it doesn't.

"Just five minutes," Shisui replies, shaking his head. "I'm sorry I had to knock you out… I know I promised not to."

Fuuko shakes her head and pushes herself off the leaf-littered earth. The midday sun filters through the massive canopy, giving strange shadows to the two men's faces. Kakashi's face is blank like his Hound mask and though Shisui's is expressive, his eyes are lined with exhaustion. "It's fine."

"Do you… want to talk about it?" Kakashi asks.

Died in the labs. Was reborn. Don't know why either. Not exactly the things she wanted to share with Kakashi even if the she before would have trusted him with her life. It sounds funny no matter how she transposes the words and probably guarantees a trip to Inoichi-sensei, so she says, "No."

Kakashi takes it better than she expected him to. It probably says something when he doesn't even push the issue, instead he runs through some hand seals and summons a tri-coloured collie. He probably thinks that she wants some comforting. Her awkward nii-san, who finds words of comfort harder than an S-rank mission, falls back on summoning her favourite ninken.

The collie eyes her with his beady brown eyes. "What did you do now?"

She barks a laugh. "What makes you think I did something, Bakushou?" The collie only gives her an unimpressed look.

"Well come on-" he slaps his tail in Kakashi's face. "Pick her up so we can go get some yakiniku."

"I can walk, you know," she says when Kakashi picks her up and slings her across his back, his arms hooked around her knees. Shisui is right beside her, filling the silence with his endless chatter. Fuuko is happy to enjoy this brief moment. Whatever that had happened to make her flashback so vivid and immersive, it had helped to integrate her different sets of memories; or the very least, accept that she's here to stay.

She shovels any other insecurities that threatens to swallow her and focused on black haired boy, first find out where Danzo's plans are and then maybe save Shisui. Fuuko leans against nii-san's shoulder, breathing a small huff and despite the fact that he says nothing, she feels him squeezing her legs as though saying, 'I'm here'.

 **Notes:**

I so need someone to discuss plotlines and/or beta for me, well if anyone's interested, let me know!

Meanwhile to discuss some things that I'm sure has crossed everyone's mind while reading chp 3, yes, Fuuko's memories are fragmented and out of order. She doesn't make a lot of sense and she's very painfully aware of this. I have a lot of things I want to add to Fuuko, so much stuff that I'm beginning to think that it is too much details.

Since Kakashi has a family member still, I think his personality development after Minato's death would be different, as such he's a bit more vocal (and closer to his post anbu personality) that what would have been predicted.

 **So questions: Shisui or Itachi? Who do you prefer?**


	4. Waking up: Part 4

With careful questioning, Fuuko eventually figures out that she has a year or less to stop the Uchiha massacre from happening. Itachi is currently twelve and going on thirteen while Sasuke is now seven. She can't remember if it had happened when Sasuke was seven or eight, but it probably wouldn't hurt to be prepared.

She has seen the unveiled suspicion from some fellow shinobi when walking with Shisui and Itachi in the village, and had wondered if it was Danzo's influence or simply the Kyuubi effect. The more she interacts with the other shinobi, the more she doubts the latter. It is true that that Kyuubi incident seemed to have played a substantial role in creating the suspicion but surely not _that_ much. Afterall there were numerous Uchiha names carved onto the KIA memorial, right beside those lost on that night. They had most certainly been fighting alongside the rest of the village.

The female Hatake pauses in her musing, looking up to find herself at the academy gates. Lost in her thoughts, her feet has unconsciously brought her here. Why?

"Nee-chaaaaaaaan!" a shrill voice shrieks out. A blonde dashes towards her, cutting through the sea of academy students and nearly barreling into her, had it not been for his dark shadow grabbing hold of the blonde's collar.

"Dobe! Remember what nii-san said? Fuuko-neechan had a serious injury," Sasuke scolds.

Even at seven, the chibi Uchiha has the broody face that Fuuko ( _barely_ ) remembers from her past life. It's still jarring to have bits of Vengeful Sasuke from _then_ and the kid Sasuke that she trained from young, floating about the foreground of her memories. Seeing Naruto makes her memories no less discordant. Naruto, the kid she unofficially adopted she was eleven, watching over him because Kakashi couldn't without spiralling into a panic attack.

She knows of these stuff. And she doesn't.

The blonde blinks and jerks back his outstretched arms, mumbling an apology. "I hadn't seen you for awhile. Are you better now?"

"I am." It would be hard for her to be ' _better_ ' when there's no going back. Perhaps this explains Sasuke's strange familiarity with her, Fuuko thinks. Naruto edges towards her and she rests her hand on his head awkwardly, not feeling quite sure on her expected reaction.

"Are you here to fetch us for training?" Sasuke asks eagerly, Naruto turns with an equally enthusiastic face.

"We practiced really hard on the shurikens," Naruto grins.

Did the original Fuuko train them? She presses her lips together in thought as she searches her ( _the body's_ ) memories. Strange as it seemed, despite having memories of _then_ and memories of _now,_ there were a large portion of memories still missing. Holes like what exactly happened in there are missing. Neither Kakashi nor Shisui have allowed her to read the mission reports since they both fear that she'll have a reaction to it. She thinks they're being overprotective, one way or another, she will find out what happened.

"Well, we can go to training ground twelve and you can show me your progress."

"Really? Score!" Naruto whoops before bouncing excitedly down the road. "You always said that it was you and the weird ghost-niisan's special spot."

Sasuke swivels his dark eyes to her, regarding her keenly. "Are you sure you're better?" He snaps a look at the hyper blonde in front of them. "I can always convince dobe that you need another day off."

Fuuko flicks his nose with a wry grin. "What did I say about calling Naruto, dobe?"

Sasuke scuffles his shoe on the dirt, face looking intently at the ground. "Aniki said that sometimes things go bad. Sometimes even when they look alright, they are still unwell. He said we shouldn't feel bad if you don't remember us," he says in a voice so quiet that Fuuko barely catches it, hands fisting the hem of his shirt. "Naruto-kun said you'd be fine, but… but…"

Fuuko peels the death-grip that Sasuke has on his shirt and kneels in front of him. Naruto, who has turned back to see why they were so slow, now hovers near them hesitantly until she waves him in. How much can she tell them? How much _can_ she even remember? Truth to be told, Fuuko could barely remember of her _then_ life interacting with children of their age, disregarding the fact that she didn't like children. So when she finally opens her mouth to speak reassuring words to the two kids, there's a note of hysteria on the undertone of her voice.

"I'm sorry," she starts simply and decides perhaps some truth would be better. "I have issues with remembering things. I remembered _some_ stuff and I forgot quite a bit. But I do remember training you two..."

If she tries hard enough, she can make out the hazy memory of her teaching them to throw a kunai and teaching them katas. Fuuko's not lying however she's not telling the entire truth. Isn't that what being a ninja is about?

"Parts of it," she adds, not really feeling the confidence that the two kids seemed to have of her. Despite having trained with Kakashi and the occasional Shisui and Itachi, Fuuko's not sure if she's even up to scratch in training other people.

"So we're not really going to training ground twelve?" Naruto asks with a disappointed whine.

"Dobe! You didn't let Fuuko-neechan finish!" Sasuke pinches Naruto hard on his bicep.

Naruto yelps and slaps his hand away. "We don't have to. Just because she forget stuff doesn't make her different." The blond boy tugs her off her feet and down the road. "Come on nee-chan, we always go to the Uchiha backwoods for training. Fugaku-ojisan gave us special permission. Then we always have ramen after that."

"We do not!" Sasuke retorts fiercely. "Don't let dobe trick you. We do _not_ have ramen for dinner after training."

"Yes we do!"

"No we don't. Why did we even let baka Shisui-niisan introduce you to ramen?"

The two bicker continuously with her sandwiched in the middle as the trio make their way to the Uchiha woods and Fuuko lets the strange familiarity wash over her.

This is okay, right?

Fuuko gazes at the myriad of buildings. She thinks of the last time she had walked through the city ( _people so uncourteous to wheelbound people_ ) it had been the evening with Shisui. It was a beautiful evening. She remembers the strange warmth in her chest just thinking about it. Had they been alone?

 _"_ _Contrary to popular belief. I do not like eggplant or ramen. They love it, but I-" she leant forward, voice dropping as though telling secret. "I love meat."_

 _Shisui laughs and presses his lips on her palm. "Don't I already know that?"_

A flare of chakra alerts her to Shisui's arrival as they walk past the marketplace. She's honestly surprised that it took him so long to materialise. For the last one month it had always one of the three hovering about, like they were watching her and they probably were.

"Oh it's you," Sasuke says, grimacing at Shisui.

"Hey!" Shisui pokes the chibi Uchiha on the cheek. "I took the time out to join you guys."

"We don't need a useless shinobi like you. You even fell for dobe's trick!"

Fuuko rests her other arm on Sasuke's head. "Sasuke-kun, you can't judge people like that. Do you know what's the most important thing that shinobi's have to be good at?"

Sasuke raises an eyebrow. "Bukijutsu?"

She wags her finger and points at Naruto who jumps excitedly yelling cool jutsu. "No, the most thing is…" she bends forward, whispering, "deception. You never show all your cards, you never underestimate an opponent and most importantly, you never let your opponent read you properly."

Fuuko motions to Shisui. "Take this good-for-nothing shinobi who fell for an academy student's trick."

"Hey!"

"You'll never see him as someone great and then," she throws a chakra-infused kunai at his head and he catches it without even blinking.

"That could have killed me!"

She snorts at his mock outrage. "The day Shisui of the Body Flicker gets nailed by a kunai would be the day I retire as a ninja."

His lips twitch into a smile and he flickers to her, slinging his arm across her shoulders. "Is that all it'd take for the Lightning Blade of Konoha to retire?"

Naruto scrunches his nose in disgust. "Ew. They're at it again. Come on teme, let's go to the woods before they decide to do something else."

Fuuko can't decide what's more embarrassing, that she gets what Naruto has implied or the fact she doesn't remember anything about Shisui in that way.

 _Shisui cocked his head, his face delineating in the contrast of the moon. "You watch, I'll make you change your mind."_

 _Her lips curled in smug triumph. "You can try."_

'How do you tell someone you don't remember anything about that about them… about us?' she thinks. Unable to come to a non-awkward solution, the reborn woman shrugs Shisui's arm off, drifting away from him."I don't-" she starts and stops, not really sure how to phrase it.

"Oh." He gets it quickly, thankfully. His crestfallen face pricks something in her more than she assumes she would - at least for a guy she doesn't remember much. Shisui clears his throat, plastering a smile on his face that Fuuko knows it's definitely fake. "It's fine. Don't worry, I understand. It wasn't a big deal anyway."

He says it like he means it, though the terse line of his body says otherwise.

 _"_ _Don't try to lie to me Uchiha-kun." She folded her arms and levelled him a look. "We might be teammates now, but when we meet each other in the tournament, I don't want you to go easy on me."_

 _"_ _Fuu-chan-"_

 _"_ _It's Fuuko-chan. Not Fuu-chan or Fufu-chan and dear god, not Fuuko-nyan. Now do I or do I need to sic Inoichi-sensei on you for going easy on me_ because I'm a girl _?" She lifted a sardonic eyebrow and he heaved a large sigh of resignation._

 _"_ _I promise," he said and she knows from the angle of his shoulders that he was lying._

Fuuko purses her lips. "Shisui-"

"Dobe!"

The two look up in time to see Sasuke and Naruto crash into a shinobi. "Tch. Watch it Uchiha," the shinobi clucks his teeth at Sasuke with a sneer that confirms what Fuuko has suspected. It is not the Kyuubi incident but mostly from Danzo's influence - it has to be. In any case, shouldn't it have been him sneering at Naruto if he was that upset about the Kyuubi? Not that she wanted Naruto to be sneered. It just didn't seem right for the shinobi to be staring at Sasuke, or any child, with such unconcealed hostility.

Sasuke, being unlike the brat she roughly remembers, shrinks back instead of retorting as she anticipates, flinching as the shinobi raises his hand. Is he really going to strike a child? Fuuko flash steps in between the shinobi and Sasuke. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Hatake. Why are you protecting of those privileged brats?"

"I'm not sure about the privileged part but I do know they are brats. Kids that meant you no harm."

"He's an Uchiha."

"Yes. A terribly good observation, shinobi-san," she deadpans.

"Shinobi-san?" The man repeats in an incredulous tone, leaning into her face. "Since when you called me that? Hatake, do you not recognise who I am?"

"A dick who was about to hit a seven year old kid. That's who you are." She can hear Sasuke draw and hold his breath, his fingers finding its way into a tight hold on her jounin vest.

"So. The Uchihas have not only broken you, they have destroyed your memories."

"Suzu-chin*," Shisui interrupts, stepping beside her. A large, loopy smile drapes across his forcibly tense face. "I didn't see you over the large obnoxious aura. Has your chinchin* grown any bigger?"

"What are you, twelve?"

"That's not what your girlfriend said last night."

"At least I have the common courtesy to fight a giant fox demon when its invading my home. Oh where was your clan? That's right, hiding."

"Technically… we had the most casualties… you know, like protecting your mum."

"You mean after controlling the fox into attacking my own home."

" _Our,_ " Shisui corrects.

"You Uchihas don't deserve to live here," he scoffs. Fuuko never imagined the discrimination against the Uchihas would have been this bad. It must have been, she admits belatedly. If not there would have been no real reason for the coup.

"The Uchihas were founders too," Fuuko says, deciding to step in before the argument turns into a fight.

"Interrupts the Uchiha dog. Woof woof!"

She can feel Shisui's body stilling at his words, the growing heat as the shinobi continues his tirade. She can't remember his name. Yet judging from his words, they had been friends, fought the war on the same platoon at some point and drifted apart. That is unsurprising. Considering shortly after the end of the Third Shinobi War and the death of Namikaze Minato, she had followed her brother into Anbu. It is a known fact that life changes completely upon joining Anbu.

"Funny how you make fun of Fuuko-chan now. Weren't you hiding behind her skirts during the war?" The smile on Shisui's face is unnerving, even for her. "Poor little birdie hiding behind a dog."

The shinobi's fist flies fast - faster than most people, but still not faster than Shisui of the Body Flicker. Shisui reappears behind the shinobi, heckling at the dark purple haired man. "Oh Suzuki- _chan_ , where are you aiming?"

Shisui lets another punch narrowly miss his face, the eerie smile widening across his face.

"Suzuki!"

Suzuki stops in mid-punch, head tilting to the approaching purple haired man. Twins, Fuuko determines. Their grey eyes, right down to the sharp chins are alike. "What do you think you're doing, Suzuki?"

"Subaru-niisan…" Suzuki starts weakly, running his hand through his long bangs. "It's the Uchiha dogs. They always get less than what they deserve"

The bearded man, Subaru sighs loudly. "We're leaving." He grabs Suzuki by the arm, nods at Fuuko and Shisui and flickers away.

"Are they not going to even apologise?" Fuuko asks aloud.

"They never do," Sasuke replies. His hand is still trembling on her jacket and she thinks that Konoha must have gotten it wrong. Anything that makes a child scared is bad, especially when it comes from the people that are supposed to protect them. Suzuki wasn't afraid of the 'demon brat', she doesn't see that sort of fear in his eyes. She sees betrayal and distrust, she sees him lashing out in fear that he's next. All the things wrong for a hidden village, all the things wrong for a fellow comrade in arms.

Then she wonders why no one seems to be doing anything.

-/-/-/-/-

The new Taichou is Badger and one that she has not seen prior to today. "I'm your new Taichou," he says simply, then pulls the mask off as expected of him. With the exception of the Anbu commander, his selected confidante and Anbu squadmates, no one else should know the identity behind the mask.

Amusingly enough, Itachi is Shisui's confidante as Kakashi is her's, so the four of them happens to know each other masks. It's also strange that they have similar masks with Itachi is Fox, Shisui is Cat, Kakashi is Hound and her Wolf, Fuuko mostly chalks it up to it intentional and that their Anbu commander has an odd sense of humour.

Badger is a naturally dark-haired man with spiky hair and narrow eyes that suggests Nara. Fuuko isn't jealous - she tells herself that but knows otherwise - because he doesn't have to wear a dark hair wig like she does.

"My name is Kusari Akito," he nods at Genma and lifts an eyebrow at her. If that's not a fake name, she will eat her wig. "We will meet at the training ground thirty-one in fifteen minutes."

Fuuko remembers this. The last time they had a squad combat exercise it had been when Shisui joined her squad. Mongoose-taicho had been upset with another greenie joining his squad.

 _"_ _I could see why they're gave me a Hatake, but why am I getting your teammate as well?" Mongoose wailed. "Another greenie! This is terrible. Can you imagine how many combat simulations we'd need to clear before we can go back on the field? I might not be able to pay rent this month!"_

 _"_ _I told you it was a bad idea getting promoted," Genma guffaws at him and snaps his bear mask on._

 _"_ _I thought it would be one greenie. ONE!"_

Fuuko hates this training ground in particular. It is wet and muddy, full of quicksands. All the things that make her lightning affinity particularly dangerous to her squadmates. She casts her senses out for Badger as they approach the training ground and freezes, nearly slipping off the branch.

Cat flutters around her, worried that she is having another relapse. Fuuko wants to point out that she hasn't had a relapse in the last one month except she's too busy trying to get her breath under control. It's not the training or the training ground that makes her almost hyperventilate, it's the chakra imprint on the tongue of her new taichou. She can feel Danzo closing his hands around her, around the Uchihas that she's come to love and treasure.

In that fleeting moment, Fuuko doesn't think she can do this. She's going up against the madman of Konoha, the boogeyman that every fanfiction has whispered. ( _We'll die, die, die before we can live again._ ) She takes a strangled breath, and forces her numb limbs to move. She has to. Itachi and Shisui's lives depend on. Sasuke, the cute little boy, depends on her.

"Sorry, I just remembered how many times we were electrocuted here," Fuuko laughs. She doesn't fool them. Nevertheless, they are her squadmate and in the face of a new - untried - member, they show solidarity. Bear covers her back more than he usually does, Cat is constantly drawing attention away from the two of them and if Badger hasn't observed them in the field previously, their particular attention to her is subtle enough that it would pass unnoticed. Fuuko doesn't think for a moment that Badger hasn't noticed it.

He is Root and they are always watching.

-/-/-/-/-

" _Bravery is not the absence of fear_ _but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear_." Shisui hears Fuuko muttering to herself, tapping her finger absentmindedly against the table as he sits across her. With each passing day, the odd fear-strickened face has disappeared, replaced by the constantly distracted look. Shisui isn't sure which he prefers. He misses Fuuko more than he realises he could have and the guilt for him mourning of the loss of a kunoichi that is still sitting before him, churns in his stomach like bile.

"What does that mean?" Shisui asks, sitting across her.

She stills ruefully at him as though she had not noticed him, then snatches one of his danzo from his plate. "Wouldn't you like to know?'

Her tone is light, a strange imitation of the person she once was and he wonders why she tries to pretend to be the same person.

"Bavari iz noto de…" he tries to copy and fails miserably.

" _Bravery is not the absence of fear_ _but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear_ ," she repeats it in the strange words that he's caught her saying from time to time since the moment she ran from the apartment. Regardless of Kakashi-sempai's suspicions, Shisui knows she is Fuuko. Not quite the same Fuuko, but no one comes out from an S ranked mission unscathed.

"I'll figure it out eventually," he tells her.

"I know." The smile on her lips is patronising and for some reason, Shisui can't remember ever seeing it on her before. He tightens his grip around the dango stick, viciously ripping it off. He's dying to slide his fingers between hers, kiss her palm and even though they had not been together long enough, he wants to kiss her breathless.

"Come on, I'll walk you home." Thrusting his hands into his pockets as they make their way down the road leisurely.

The sky is torched with a fiery red, streaking the darkening blue with its crimson. The first and last time they shared a kiss, it had been under a sunset like this. It was under a sunset like this when she finally agreed to go out with him.

 _"_ _Fine, one date Shisui." She smiled, drawing her hands from his ANBU vest. "Just one."_

"Do you remember anything about us?" he asks after they reach under her apartments.

Her dark grey eyes widen, her lips slightly parting at his question. With the way Fuuko's been acting, Shisui is not at all surprised that her answer will be no. Even though he had asked it, he realises to hear the word no or any equivalent to that hurts more than he can bear. Shisui turns, brushing past the other shinobi as he makes over the railings. He doesn't pause to growl at the shinobi when he hears the shinobi mutter, 'stupid, arrogant Uchihas', Shisui doesn't have enough in him to care.

In the end, he is Uchiha and they always gets less than what they deserve.

 **Notes:**

* Chinchin (or Chin for slang) actually means Dick in Japanese

This chapter would not have been written without the constant help from Wrath or the cakes that Badger has bribed me with. I must have eaten my weight in cakes just trying to write this chapter, so obviously I'm pretty mad at Badger (he had to bribe me with cakes. CAKES! I gained weight!) which is why I named the Root guy after him. HAH! Take that Badger! I'm a bit of a stickler for japanese customs and might include stuff that confuses people. Let me know if you do! I'll explain. Meanwhile I couldn't help myself with the Suzuki and Subaru. I'm honestly thinking how long it's going to take anyone to catch on that.

For those who answered the question for last chapter, it was actually a question on who to kill. Badger talked me out of it anyway, so yea, Shisui isn't going to die.

 **Question:** **What kind of summon do you think would be the coolest for Genma?**


	5. Blood in the Sky: Part 1

Kakashi is in reclining on his chair, feet up on the table, dressed in Anbu with his Hound mask neatly clasped between his hands when Shisui returned.

"Yo, how is your new Anbu leader?" Kakashi asks without a preamble.

"Get your feet off my desk and I'll tell you," Shisui grumps, wiping the table with a cleaning cloth. "He's fine. He looks like a Nara but he calls himself something else. A bit strange too."

"Strange?"

Shisui shrugs, folds the cloth and cleans the table another time through, Kakashi's sandals were particularly dirty today. "Socially awkward? You and Itachi-kun are quite similar to him. I suppose there must be a special reason why he's using a fake name." He rubs the smudge of dirt a little harder. "Damnit, why do you like putting your feet on my things?"

"At least it's not the bed this time," Kakashi says.

Shisui rounds to him, his finger pointing in his face. "You need to stop putting your dirty feet everywhere, especially after your mission. Don't you have better things to do? Like haunting Naruto-kun or stalking Fuuko-chan?"

"Haunting?" Kakashi gives him a faux outraged look. "I'd never haunt-"

"Yet he calls you Ghost-niichan because of your _haunting_ abilities. You could always just go up and say hi, you know."

Kakashi's single eye crinkles into an arc and Shisui can imagine the smile beneath his mask even without ever seeing his face. Fuuko is pretty enough, it's hard to not imagine that Kakashi wouldn't be the same. "Tell you what," Kakashi starts. "If you tell imouto that you love her, I'll stop haunting… _that boy…_ and buy him several bowls of that horrible ramen addiction that you started."

Shisui lets out a laugh. "Too late, Kakashi-sempai. Fuuko-chan and I already have been dating for almost a year." Kakashi's face stills and Shisui runs a weary hand through his hair. "Well… was," he adds.

"Was?" The brother of the woman he loves repeats in a wary tone.

Shisui sinks onto the bed, digging his elbows into his thighs. "She doesn't remember me… _us_ … in that way."

"Nothing at all?"

The look on her face from so many days ago still plagues him. He shakes his head. "No. Probably nothing at all." Between the impending coup plans, the supposedly spying on Itachi, the supposedly spying on the council, Fuuko had been an oasis to him. How he's going to last without her? Shisui cannot even begin to imagine.

"Do you even know what happened in the labs?"

Shisui doesn't. Not everything at least. Just waking up towards the end to the sounds of Fuuko keening was enough to last him several nightmares. He can put enough pieces to guess. There still isn't an official report from Fuuko about the labs, Shisui thinks that there will never be. The things that happened in there had been enough to break anyone.

He raises his head to the dark grey eye, his voice barely making a breeze. "Tell me how much you know of Stem?" Kakashi's face goes puzzled. Shisui isn't surprised that Kakashi doesn't know. Not many do and he even doubts that the Hokage does. "Stem. Soldier Training Experimental Modification. It's a program, a system, in which they create perfect little soldiers. But there's a problem there, you see. No matter how perfect your little soldiers are, they're going to hurt and break and die. So what do you do next to increase the amount of missions you can squeeze from them?"

Shisui doesn't stop for even a breath now. He's afraid that if he stops, he will never speak of this again and the accumulative fear and stress feels like it's enough to crush him. The thoughts of what exactly Orochimaru did to Fuuko does nothing to silence the guilt in him. Kakashi will no doubt blame him and Shisui thinks he is right to. It is his fault.

Shisui of the Body Flicker. Shisui, thousand blades. Uchiha Shisui, threat level A rank.

He had always known that his reputation was going to stab him in the back one day, just not this way.

"You experiment to make them more resilient. You experiment to make them stronger. But _he_ forgot to calculate how much _he_ would prize research over results. So when they split, _he_ continued his research outside Konoha while _he_ remained inside. We found him in a supposedly abandoned lab. Not so abandoned as you can see." Shisui chuckles lowly, swallowing dryly. His hand unconsciously reaches for his right eye. They had known how deep in trouble they had been when they encountered Orochimaru. Orochimaru isn't just a legendary sannin. During the Third Shinobi war, he had been one of the main reasons - along with Minato - to have pushed the tide back, singlehandedly wiping a whole field of Iwa-nins. A team of four Anbus, no matter how impeccable each of their personal records were, were no match for Orochimaru.

"Then what happened?" Kakashi prompts after a prolonged silence.

Shisui cocks his head at the silver haired jounin. "What did you think happened? You read the reports."

"All the publicly allowed Anbu reports only stated a skirmish with… _him_ that resulted in the death of Mongoose."

Shisui takes a slow deep breath, trying to freeze the cacophony of emotions swirling in him. He succeeds somewhat, mostly not. " _He_ was interested in Uchiha bodies, Uchiha eyes, and me, with the exception of Itachi, we're both reputed to have strongest Uchiha eyes in this generation. There's only so many tries you can try on an irreplaceable… test subject. So Fuuko offered herself in place of me."

-/-/-/-/-

There are eyes on her wherever she goes. Fuuko is a security risk. She knows that since she woke up in the hospital, the chakra seal that looped around her wrists tells her that. They said that it was for the medic's safety, but Fuuko is an Anbu and she knows when people lie to her.

Are the eyes watching her or watching out for her? She has yet to determine this. For now, she welcomes the eyes, especially the crow's eyes. At least while they're watching her, Root can't do anything

Fuuko slips into the Anbu headquarters, they have to know that Root has infiltrated their teams. Her footsteps echo down the hallway as it is only common courtesy to not use stealth techniques in the headquarters. Down hallway, where she presses her ungloved hand against a nondescript tile. Her memories nudge her to press the tile in various positions in a particular pattern.

She's not really Fuuko and she's not really her old self, but at least they both can agree that _she_ is an Anbu through and through.

 _"Hatake Fuuko, please stay," Kusari Akito stopped her as she was about to leave the locker with Shisui. He dismissed Shisui with a wave and Shisui motioned that he would wait for her at the teahouse._

 _"Sir." She straightened her spine into a perfect soldier posture._

 _"At ease, Fuuko."_

 _Mentally, she winced at the lack of a honorific. Not only was it impolite to call her when she had not invited him to, it was unprofessional for a captain to. She couldn't call him on it though, not unless she wanted to accused of being disrespectful. Having just been reinstated, Fuuko wasn't keen at all to be off-duty again. The press of memories were growing heavier with each day. She wanted to be back on the field, she needed to be back on the field where there was only she, herself and her mask, where she was Wolf and not Hatake Fuuko or the person that she was before, whatever her name was._

 _"Your report on Mission 238291-B-92 is missing. Any reason why?"_

 _A perfectly acceptable question, had it not because of her very apparent amnesia that no one but her squadmates, her brother and Itachi knew of._

 _"Sir. Regarding missions that involve an extended hospital stay and an extended off-duty period, a six to eight month grace is given before the report is required to be submitted."_

 _His dark, single-lidded eyes showed no emotion that Fuuko would have expected._

 _'He's Root,' Fuuko reminded herself. If her then memories were right, then Root had their emotions washed out while in the system. Any emotion that Akito, he, her new Captain showed would be false._

 _Kusari unclipped his mask, running a thumb over the side of it. "It didn't feel right to take over a team that had just lost a captain."_

 _It wasn't right at all. Under the usual Anbu protocols, one of the three would have been promoted or they would have been absorbed into other Anbu teams. There hadn't been a recorded case where a newly promoted Captain had been assigned for a team that had lost their Captain._

 _This, she didn't respond. He wasn't looking for a reply, he was looking for a reaction._

 _"I didn't have a choice." He scratched the back of his head, letting out a frustrated sound. "The mission reports submitted by your squadmates do not talk about what happened in the labs. I need your report now."_

 _"Sir-" Fuuko knew what Shisui wrote in his report, he had a copy when he finally gave in to her persistent demands a few weeks ago and what Genma wrote, she had no idea. According to Shisui, Genma had been taken out early. It had been only due to his summon that he had not died alongside Mongoose._

 _She was perfectly in her right to refuse, yet the words that she spoke was heavy and rolled with a bitter aftertaste. "You will get your report by the end of the deadline." She was courting death or trouble or both by refusing his outright command. An Anbu never refuses orders._

 _Kusari stared at her with an inscrutable expression. 'None of his expressions are real,' she told herself again, refusing to back down._

 _"Very well." He slumped his shoulders, an aura of resignation surrounding him. "I had hoped it would have been easier to know exactly what happen, so I checked your medical records but your squadmates reports didn't match up with your records. I figured it would have been easier, faster to ask from the source itself in order to make this an easier transition. Do they know what happened?"_

 _His words pricked her. The insinuation that she was purposely making things difficult made her blood curdled. It wasn't like Fuuko had not submitted a report because she was nii-san (_ nii-san never submitted reports on time _), she honestly had no idea what had happened and upon casually asking Itachi if there were repercussions to admitting memory loss, Itachi had told her, albeit bluntly, that such reports were followed by year lengths decommissioning. That hadn't sound bad, had it not been for the fact that that included training and usage of chakra, something that Fuuko had embraced and fervently loved._

 _"I know Shisui has been keeping tabs on you, almost obsessively too."_

 _And didn't Fuuko know that. She stared at her new Captain's face, using every ounce of training that the body had to force the continued blankness of her face. Root, the reborn woman reminded herself as she watched the Captain's lip twitch into a sneer-like expression._

 _"Wonder what they would say if they found out that you weren't injured at all from the mission?"_

 _Fuuko had no doubt that Shisui and nii-san would stalk her relentlessly (_ like they weren't already _) and Itachi would pull up some obscure law in the Konoha's books that would force her into a year long decommission even if it was against her will._

 _Badger might have watched Fuuko and he might have watched Wolf, but Fuuko was neither Wolf nor_ that _Fuuko. Up to that point, she had been terrified of what Root, of what Danzo had plans for her. No. She would not let her dreams (precious people) be threatened that way._

 _"With all due respect, the mission was a documented FUBAR and regarding missions that involve an extended hospital stay and an extended off-duty period, a six to eight month grace is given before the report is required to be submitted," Fuuko repeated her words. "I have another three to five months more before I am required to submit it."_

 _Her voice would have been a snarl, lips twisted into a jeer had it not been Fuuko's shinobi training. She wasn't going to just lie down and roll over because she was afraid of him or the man he worked for. Sweet lord, Kusari Akito just poked the wolf._

 _"You will get your report by the end of the deadline." She arched an eyebrow at him and tacked on a belated 'sir' before dismissing herself._

Fuuko slips into the commander's room, knowing that the seals must have informed him of her. Horse looks up from his paperwork, the black lines curved around his eye holes strike an intimidating factor.

"Wolf, what is it?"

She slows the fast thumping of her heart, taking a moment to cast her chakra sense out. How deep Root had infiltrated Anbu she can't tell, but the commander needs to know of infiltrators at least. Fuuko opens her mouth to speak, centring her focus then she stops. There is a chakra imprint on Horse's tongue, the chakra imprint of Danzo that she has memorised while on guard duty in the Hokage's office.

"Sir…" Fuuko starts, her voice sound weaker than she remembered it to be. ( _Weaker than her_ ) She can't tell Horse the real reason why she's here, but there are no good reasons for her to be here, except…

She draws her breath and braces for the things she hadn't been ready to talk about. "I'm here to talk about Mission 238291-B-92."

Root, and by that extension Danzo, already knows the details of it and if Orochimaru is sharing his deductions with Danzo, Fuuko wouldn't know; but it's better than letting Danzo know that she knows of Root.

* * *

 **Notes:**

Wow. Panda summon for Genma, anyone? Can't get the angry panda vision out of my head. Really can't.

Just to note. I understand if Fuuko seems inconsistent with her line of thought. The reason as to why will be revealed in the later chapters. Also, as this arc revolves around the Uchihas, we'll be seeing a lot of Uchiha centric pov.

Those who didn't notice, there's a secondary series related to this called "Words not Spoken". Seeing I have 16k of discarded words that spawned while writing this series (scenes and timelines that never made it into this series), I felt sad just deleting them. Some are pretty decent, so I posted it!

The-Anime-Sage poked and talked me through this chapter. Ugggh the dialogue! D:

 **Question: Who is your favourite not really shown canon character?  
** Mine happens to be *cough*Genma*cough*.


	6. Blood in the Sky: Part 2

**Notes:** I'm sorry this chapter is particularly short and delayed. I was very ill for many days and ended up in the hospital twice. I think I've seen more doctors in the last week than I have in the whole entire year and I'm still sick. I figured a short chapter is better than none and since my beta is away, I'm sorry if this chapter is not as polished or up to scratch as it usually is.

Thank you for all your lovely reviews. I cannot emphasise how much they mean to me. Thank you!

For those who celebrate Setsubun / Lunar New year, have a good one. Meanwhile, I'll be stuck here instead of driving up. *weeps*

* * *

The apartment is dark by the time Fuuko gets back from the Anbu Headquarters. The floor creaks under her sandaled feet and she catches the flying kunais before it impales her. She curses, slotting them back into the trap and resetting it. Even in her exhausted state she shouldn't have tripped the trap. Shouldn't, what a re-occurring word.

The Anbu commander shouldn't be Root, her Anbu captain should be Root, the sushi seller three stalls down shouldn't be Root, yet they are. Fuuko collapses onto her bed, flopping an arm over her eyes, wishing the growing headache to disappear. Pushing herself off the bed, she eats, showers and then stops in front of her closet, a realisation halting her actions.

The entire debriefing had been an interrogation in disguise. Badger is Root and so is Horse. That means Danzo has all the mission details provided by her other two teammates yet, Badger had pressed for her for details. Why?

Sinking onto her bed, she steeples her fingers. Fuuko turns it over in her mind again and again, unable to come to a suitable conclusion; a conclusions that fitted all the pieces. Is she missing a piece?

"I'm baccck," Kakashi's voice echoes from the doorway. "Imouto?" He pads down the hallway, swings her door open and immediately slams the door shut in front of him.

"Imouto…" he chokes. "W-why are you sitting naked on your bed?" his voice reverberates in the hallway.

Fuuko pauses in that line of thoughts and tilts her head to the door where her nii-san is standing behind. If the Anbu commander and her own captain are Root, then is Kakashi one too? ( _Trust, trust, trust_ ) She swallows shallowly. "Ne, nii-san, do you trust your team?"

"Of course," he says it without hesitation the way Fuuko already knows he would. "Is this about your new captain?"

What if, what if, what if Kakashi _did_ join Root? She searches her _then_ memories for that snippet of him working for Danzo and pales. Would she know? All she needs to do is just use her chakra sense. "Maybe, perhaps. He calls himself Kusari Akito but he looks like a Nara."

Fuuko's hands curl around her knees and she gathers her chakra, stopping just as she's about to cast it out. ( _Trust, trust, trust_ ) Does she really want to know?

"Maa… maybe he has his reasons."

 _Yes._

She casts it out, feeling the chakra signature of lightning in a clear sky that she's come to recognize as nii-san's, her chakra spooning over him. Then Fuuko feels _it,_ the slight ping of chakra, the bitter taste like fermented bitter gourd. Her shoulders are shaking as she asks "What about traitors in your team?"

( _Why? How could he have done it?_ ) A part of her bursts into questions she isn't sure she actually wants to know, and the other part of her wishes she never found out.

"What did you say? Traitors? Who?" Kakashi swings the door open, his eye wide open, then swears, slapping his hand over his eye. "Damnit, put on some clothes, Fuuko! Why are you still naked? Do you want to catch a cold?"

He marches over to her drawers and throws a set of sleeping clothes at her. Grudgingly, Fuuko slips the shirt and shorts on. "I don't trust him," she tells him honestly. "Genma doesn't even know him." And that says something, because Genma isn't just a long distance specialist, he's a gossiper with skills that are without peer, save for Inoichi-sensei. There isn't a shinobi or kunoichi in Konoha that Genma doesn't vaguely know.

"Well I don't either. But there are a lot of ninjas in the reserve."

He raises a brow at her, but she's not going to let him derail her from her line of thoughts. "Do we even have a clan called Kusari," Fuuko presses.

"We could have… Do you really think he's a traitor?" Kakashi sinks on the bed beside her.

She shrugs then considers her words. "Have you… heard of Root?"

"No," he replies but the minutely stiffening to her words tell her otherwise.

She turns to the window, looking past him. She can feel his dark grey eye resting on her, a strange look that Fuuko hopes it's not what it is. "There is an organisation…in Konoha called Root and very much like the Anbu."

Kakashi laughs and Fuuko can hear the forced laughter. "Are you sure you're not mistaking this Root for Anbu?"

"If the Shinobis pledge their loyalty to someone else that isn't the Hokage, would they be considered traitor?"

"Maa. That depends on the circumstances no?" Kakashi murmurs more to himself and less to her. "Perhaps you're overthinking it?" Kakashi scratches his head, shoulders slouching forward and ruffles her hair. "Want some cocoa?" he says it as though offering her her comfort drink will make a difference.

Fuuko watches him leave, watches his broad shoulders while he strolls down the unlit hallway. She thinks of all the things that had gone wrong, this was the worst of them all, for now all she think of when she sees Kakashi is betrayer, betrayer, betrayer.

-/-/-/-/-

In the end, Fuuko is not a least bit surprised that they get a mission just after she submits the verbal report to Horse. She tells him of the things she remembers Orochimaru did to her, adds half-truths of details and fibs most of it considering she barely remembers any to begin with. Fuuko doesn't tell him about the darkness before she wakes or that the last memory of _original_ Fuuko was the same darkness. The darkness that was gentle and warm like a cocoon yet savage and cold.

( _We are_ ) _'Hatake Fuuko.'_ Fuuko thinks and never speaks of it to anyone even if she wakes up in the middle of the night gasping.

The mission is an easy one or should have been. An easy B rank mission, minimal chance of interference, or at least according to the mission scroll.

' _We're just picking up a scroll_. _Whoever who checked the mission needs to be demoted._ ' Fuuko sneers inwardly, knocking the shurikens away with a kunai. Dropping into a sideways roll, she draws her kodachi in time to deflect a very long sword. Her heart beating in a skittish beat as she struggles to move her body in time. All the practice spars had not readied her for the adrenaline rush or the twist of fear in her stomach.

( _Just breathe_ ) ' _Easy for you to say,_ ' Fuuko bites back to her inner monologue, diving frantically to the ground to avoid the sword swipe.

"Well, must be a newbie?" The grey skinned ninja sneers at her. "Still green behind the gills."

She leaps back, narrowly evading his sword. The gills on his face struck her as someone familiar. ' _No time for recollection now!'_ she yells at herself. Fuuko tries to dredge up the body's memories, but the more she tries, the more she fails. Behind her, Bear and Cat are busy fighting another three kiri-nins, and Badger is fighting the leader of this kiri platoon. She can deal with him, she has to.

Her sword rings from another deflected blow, her hand almost numb and tingling from the impact.

"Oh, you can't be green," the kiri-nin with gills on his face snorted. "You're Wolf. The famous Wolf of Konoha. You're a lot less skilled than what your reputation made out of you."

' _Kisame! That's his name right? Oh god, I'm fighting a S-rank missing nin. No wait! He's not missing-nin yet. So no chakra eating sword yet?'_ Fuuko bites back her bewildered thoughts. She has really got to calm herself down. Then she slips on a piece of mud. A really silly, rudimentary thing, but she slips and the kiri-nin takes the opening.

( _We'll be fine._ )

Suddenly her body pulls a breath, her heart slowing it's drum beat as she dodges his stab, like she's taken a backseat in her mind and her body flows fluidly without her bumbling attempts. Her hands flashing seals that she's not sure what. Her kodachi literally sparks to life with the last seal and in a movement that Fuuko never thought herself capable of, she dashes forward, the kiri-nin just barely blocking her attack.

She vaults over his swipe, hoof kicking him in the head. Her sword turning into a quick jab which she disengages to catch his sword. Her chakra is pooling into the ground, tugging her into the wet earth and out of the way of an enormous water dragon that the kiri-nin has conjured. Not to be outdone, Wolf grabs the kiri-nin by the leg, channelling lightning through the man. His scream is pleasantly low and satisfying especially after all the cuts and bruises she had sustained from his fight.

"I see why they call you Lightning Wolf now," he pants with a grin. Kisame grabs her by the neck, dragging her from beneath the earth. Black dots dance across her vision, gasping and croaking for air, her feet struggling to find purchase on anything. "Sorry kid, but the scroll's ours."

"Do you even know what's in that scroll?" she squeezes the words out with the remainder of her breath. Fuuko might have sneered at the honesty of ranking of her mission, but she's not naive enough to believe that such a dubious mission would have come from anyone except Danzo and if it's Danzo, it would be shady as hell.

"And do you?"

"More than you," she smiles, trying to channel lightning into his body.

He snarls and sends her splintering through several trees and from her dimming vision, she sees him and two other of his teammates retreat.


	7. Blood in the Sky: Part 3

His body feels like a mess when Shisui wakes up sprawled on the ground. He tugs his mask onto his forehead, with a loud gasp and scrubs the blood from his eye. Badger is sitting on a convenient remnant of Bear's earth release pillars. "Is everyone alright?" Shisui asks.

"Talk about yourself," Bear snorts, hovering a glowing green hand over Shisui's temple. "You're the one the most badly injured among us and that's grade 2 concussion and a cracked rib."

"What are you talking about? I saw Wolf got-" he turns and sees Fuuko squatting among the branches, clearly acting as their lookout. Shisui knows he hadn't seen wrongly. There _are_ several trees in a row all snapped neatly in a row like something had been thrown through them. He knows that the large grey skinned ninja had tossed Fuuko through the trees like she weighed nothing. Hell, he knows for the size of those trees, how much force is required to break them and how much pain would be inflicted. Shisui hasn't trained with Gai without being tossed like a ragdoll through trees that were half the size and half the number of those. Her spine should have snapped. She would have-

Shisui shoves the rest of his mask away, emptying his stomach on the ground next to him. The image his mind conjures would haunt him for the next few weeks, this he already knows. "Concussion's a bitch," Bear comments, lifting his hand off Shisui's ribs. "Okay. I've healed the rib but it's a little fragile, so be careful."

Badger nods, motioning a gather up and Wolf hops off the tree like she's perfectly fine, standing over his supine form. As far as Shisui's eyes can tell, she looks hale and healthy.

"What about the mission?" She crouches beside him and Shisui can see the rips in her uniform where _there should be injuries._ Something isn't adding up in his mind and he's certain it isn't his concussion talking. His stomach rolls irritability as he pushes himself off the ground.

Bear holds up a scroll with smugness that Shisui can practically feel it radiate off him. "Switched it in mid-fight. We'll be far out before they even noticed that they got a fake scroll," he rolls his shoulder, his fingers twitches that suggests his want to stick his senbon between his teeth.

Shisui can feel her chakra buzzing within her instead of the calm placid signature that he is - was familiar with. "Wolf?" She tilts her head towards to indicate she heard him. "Are you alright?"

"I am fine," Wolf replies, her tone short and clipped.

And there is again. The Fuuko that Shisui doesn't know. Shisui pushes himself upright, sliding the kunais and shurikens that Bear has retrieved into his pouches.

"Mission complete. Let us return to Konoha," Badger says.

Wolf brings up the rear and she doesn't say anything. There is a twinge of frustration biting at him. They should have tried harder to get her to drop out of Anbu. Anbu swallows everyone up, Shisui didn't have a choice in joining Anbu but Fuuko did. Shisui shakes himself out of his reverie, focusing on the rhythmic jumping and landing through the trees.

He'll have to pull her back to them, to _him,_ get her to open up to them. It is clear that there is something bothering her. Oh why did Gai have to be out on a long-term mission. Shisui would do anything for the exuberant Gai to be here.

They only have a limited time left, after all with the way the clan is progressing, Shisui isn't sure if he can get out unscathed.

-/-/-/-/-

Shisui slips through the dark hallway and into the stifling room, taking his seat beside Itachi. Fugaku gives him a sharp look but thankfully says nothing.

"They refused to let Kissaki be promoted to Jounin," Elder Shinogi says loudly to an argument that clearly Shisui had missed from his very late arrival. "Kissaki is one of our promising chuunins whose strengths far surpasses what is required for Jounin. And not just Kissaki, Nakago and Yokote." His wrinkled hands slaps the dark mahogany table sharply, looking evenly back at Fugaku. "It's a blatant snub against the Uchihas."

"How much more are we going to take this lying down?" A female calls out.

The long dark haired man that Shisui recognizes as Uchiha Inabi snorts. "Are we forgetting that they only nominated Minato and Orochimaru for the Fourth. They didn't even consider Wicked Eye Fugaku or Dancing Devil Sayami. Both of which had contributed largely to the defeat of Iwa nins."

"That's enough," the small petite woman cuts his rant off. "Your talk on the Fourth is an old subject. I never had the interest of being a Hokage to begin with and this talk about not promoting. Surely you must have noticed that Kissaki has a temper issue, Nakago is great at following orders but his leadership skills lacking and why are we even talking about Yokote?"

"Sayami-san, they are Uchiha members, you're being too harsh-"

Her face and voice is empty of emotions when she says lowly, "These are _their_ lives we talk about. We are not going to push for their promotions because _we_ want more Jounins in our clan. Has the years in military police addled you or have you forgotten how much harder Jounin missions are? Are you so keen to have more Jounins that you are willing to pack them into tiny cypress* boxes?"

Shisui watches the woman draw herself up and in spite of her short stature, her sheer motion seems to fill the pregnant silence.

"Ridiculous. All of you-"

"Sit down, Sayami- _chan_ _**_ ," Elder Shinogi orders her.

She turns around to Shinogi and Shisui can see only her three spinning tomoe proclaiming her anger. "Don't try to condescend me with my age, Shinogi-san. I have not been a young girl for decades. You talk about moving with time, showing a force of power. Do you hear yourself speak? Ridiculous." Tapping the side of her temple with a finger, Sayami's mouth twists as she continues. "What I think is the general population of Konoha has seen how crazy you all have become."

"Sayami," Fugaku says. His face impassive as always but Shisui can now see the hints of worry for her on the Uchiha clan head's face from his increased interactions with the Clan Head. It is strange though that Fugaku might be the clan head but in the end it always seems like he is bowing to the Elders' decisions. Shisui wonders if the Elders would finally strong arm Fugaku-sama into supporting the 'show of power'.

"Che-" The Jounin clicks her tongue loudly and sweeps out of the meeting room, the sliding door slamming loudly behind her. Shisui wishes he had the strength like her to refuse the Elders' orders. The Elders have gone down a path he wishes to have nothing to do with. Power, honor, for the clan, with the clan, yet they don't seem think for the people in the clan.

Elder Shinogi turns to one of the Uchihas and suggests in a way that Shisui knows it's not a suggestion. "Perhaps Gunto-san should watch Sayami-san and make sure she's alright."

Gunto squares his shoulders and nods curtly at the suggestion. Fugaku subtly bristles under the Elder's insinuation that Sayami needs watching. It's blatant disrespect for the clan head's niece.

"For the clan, with the clan," Shisui murmurs inaudibly to himself. All too power-hungry that they are blinded by their own faults.

Itachi is waiting for him in their usual spot near the Naka river later that night.

"They asked you to spy on me, didn't they?"

Shisui doesn't deny it because they did and it isn't in him to lie to Itachi. He's never enjoyed spying on Itachi since from the beginning and has spent his years deflecting the Elders' suspicions. Itachi finding out has always been a thing Shisui knew would happen. It's not too difficult to put two and two together especially after how the Elder had ordered Gunto to 'watch' Sayami.

"I didn't tell them anything."

"I know." Itachi nods and extrapolates at Shisui's mildly surprised look. "The Elders would have acted if they had known how we had been spying on them for Konoha. And I've seen your reports."

Shisui wonders if Itachi had doubted his loyalty, doubted the ability to trust him enough to sneak into the records room and read his reports.

"What do you think we should do?" Itachi asks. The clan has put out a clan wide 'reminder' to sharpen their kunais and shurikens. How much longer can Fugaku dance the dance around the Elders or has he been on the Elders' side the whole time?

Shisui plays with the kunai he pulled out, spinning it around on his finger as he considers his opinions. "I have Kotoamatsukami," he offers. Shisui has never told anyone that he actually knows his mangekyou's abilities. The clan records tell him that Kotoamatsukami is a very dangerous ability and the lesser people knew of it, the better it would be.

"Kotoamatsukami?" Itachi repeats as though tasting the word.

"It is a subtle mind-controlling genjutsu ability." It goes unsaid that Shisui doesn't _want_ to use it but if it comes down to it, he will. The idea of putting his own clan members under a mind control leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

"For the clan, with the clan." Itachi echoes his words, a mockery of the claims belief.

Shisui's face goes serious. "For the people who live in the clan."

-/-/-/-/-

 _"Nii-san!" she zipped past the front line, ducking around the enemies that tried to stop her. The sword that tou-san had given her danced across the battlefield like a bolt of lightning._

 _"It's the White Lightning!" The Iwa-nins cried out._

 _She sidestepped the rain of shurikens, throwing back the explosive kunais. Slashing her sword into one of them, sweeping him off his feet. They were all taller and bigger than her, but she didn't let them stop him._

 _Kakashi was just several yards away, dodging and spinning away, his hands flashing seals as he copied and spun their jutsus back at them. His chakra was almost exhausted and from the sneer of the Iwa-nins, Fuuko could tell that they too knew._

 _She feinted left, kicking one of her pursuers in the throat, dispatching the other two. Shunshining in front of Kakashi, her sword slicing through the kunai and the man's throat._

 _"Imouto?"_

 _She whirled around, grabbing him by the collar, dragging him into the trenches where they would be momentarily safe._ _"Damnit, nii-san! You can't leave me alone, you promised."_

 _His shoulders shook but no tears fell. He wasn't the sort to cry, nii-san hadn't even cried during tou-san's funeral. "Why am I still here when Obito-kun and Rin-chan is gone? Why don't you just let me join them?"_

 _"Are you abandoning me too?"_

 _Kakashi placed his head on his knees, his fingers curling tightly into the fabric of his pants. "Don't try to guilt me. You still have Shisui-san. I have no one! Tou-san is dead, Noujou-oba is dead, Kouuki-kun is dead, so is Obito-kun and Rin-chan! Why isn't it me?"_

 _Fuuko circled her arms around him. "Am I not someone? Am I not worthy enough to live for?" She knew it was wrong to make him dependent on her, to guilt him into remembering the way their father had abandoned them but the way he was spiraling, she wouldn't have much time left to stop him from following their father's footsteps._

 _Kakashi's arms move to grip the back of her shirt tightly, he tucked his head in the crook of her neck. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."_

 _"Shusssh, it's okay." Fuuko ran her hands through his hair, murmuring quietly. "Just remember, I'll go anywhere with you, nii-san. Even in death."_

Fuuko blinks, her muscles slack from her trained conditioning despite her mind whirling in discord. The dream, the memory isn't something she is certain she wants to remember so vividly. It feels almost like her subconscious is reminding her of how low Kakashi once fell and whatever that means, Fuuko isn't sure. She sits up, feeling the apartment empty of any chakra signatures.

' _Nii-san is out again,_ ' she thinks.

All the better for her, Fuuko firmly tells herself before the worry could set in. Is he here for her or for Root, part of her wants to believe he's really there for her. The original Fuuko had a good memory even as a baby. She remembers Kakashi carrying her to the engawa while he practiced his katas in the early morning sun, catching her when she tried to follow him up the walls. When they 'played ninja' with Noujou-oba, he had carried her across the trees. Fuuko remembers Kakashi's cold hands that night of their father's funeral.

 _'I'll go anywhere with you, nii-san. Even in death,'_ she told him once upon a time. She trusts him, their bond is stronger than the orders Danzo might have given.

Fuuko grips her knee tightly, taking comfort in the pain that her knee is registering. Could she tell nii-san?

'Nii-san, I broke my spine in my last mission,' she tests the words in her mind and thinks it sounds as ludicrous as she thought at the beginning. Perhaps she _thought_ she broke her spine, she _is_ walking now after all. How can someone who had broken their spine walk?

Fuuko pushes herself off the bed and relishes at the cold wooden floor. "Why are you so happy?" the low baritone asks and she spins her head up to see Itachi is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea so silently that she hadn't noticed him. His dark onyx eyes tracking her movements across the room as she pads towards him.

"I thought you two were on a mission," she deflects, attaching her shuriken pouch to her thigh and slips on the kunai pouch at her hip. Fuuko never thought she could get used to the oddly familiar and unfamiliar weight on her yet now it comforts her. The way her body moved during the fight with Kisame, it hadn't been her, but if it wasn't her then who had it been?

"He is." Itachi nods to the still steaming teapot and she pours a cup for herself. She knows he isn't fooled by her obvious deflection nevertheless is thankful that he accepts it.

"But you're not."

"Solo mission."

Anbus don't do solo missions. Duos, yes but never solo. Something pricks at her, screaming at her that it's not right. Was it Danzo? Was it Root? Fuuko tries to imagine what kind of mission would require Kakashi to be alone. She knows that nothing would happen to Kakashi, at least not until the Fourth Ninja war. Still, knowing this doesn't ease the disquiet in her, like she knows something very bad is going to happen. Her last words to Kakashi were less than amicable. She just hopes that whatever ripples her existence had created, this is not one of the things that would change. Belatedly, she realises that just because she doesn't trust him, doesn't mean she doesn't love him.

"He'll be fine," Itachi assures her.

"Well then, why are you here?" She asks, sitting across him.

He slides a paper to her. It's an agreement that if anything happens to Uchiha Mikoto, Uchiha Fugaku, Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Sayami and Uchiha Shisui and they are unable to care for Uchiha Sasuke, the guardianship of Sasuke would fall to her instead of the clan. The idea of one of the Uchihas willingly letting their clan members be taken in by 'outsiders' befuddles her. In spite of that longstanding reputation, the paper is signed by the five mentioned Uchihas. The paper outlines what her guardianship would imply and would overlook and is six papers long.

"Why?"

Though Fuuko knows exactly why - she has to be a fool to not notice the increasing terse interactions with the Uchiha and the rest of Konoha - she still needs Itachi to say it explicitly, to feel the other shoe drop.

"Things are happening in the clan. If anything happens, we would like to be certain that Sasuke would be in good hands." The implication that none of the five trusts the clan enough to leave Sasuke's fate to them goes unsaid.

"Why me? I know you think I'm unstable."

"I do not think you are unstable, Fuuko-san."

"I saw the reports, Itachi-kun. I recognize your handwriting, I know you have been keeping an eye on me. Don't think I didn't notice your crow following me," she spits the caustic words that she had been holding back since she woke up.

Itachi slaps a security seal on her table, his usually impassive face contrite. "We needed you out. Safe. After everything that had happened, it was a convenient excuse to pull you out of Anbu. It is easy to go missing in Anbu, but if you were only a jounin, your disappearance would notable."

"I'm capable of carrying my own weight," Fuuko sniffs unhappily. "That's not in though. If you thought I was weak then you wouldn't be sitting here trying to convince to sign this paper. You needed me out so that if things went south and Sasuke was handed to me, we'd be in full view of everyone."

Itachi tilts his head, allowing the corner of his lips to curl and she huffs, reluctantly signing the paper. "You owe me so much dango," Fuuko tells him. Already, she is planning on eating the Uchiha head clan out with dango.

"We are forever in your debt," he stands and bows deeper than she's ever seen him done before.

* * *

 **Notes:** And hello again to another chapter. There's a lot of plotting. There are a lot of random Uchiha OCs in this chapter. To be clear, they're all OCs (with the exception of Inabi), because I needed Uchihas to world build. We have a theme song for this chapter and a fan art of Fuuko - (luna-orlha tumblr com/post/155619568916/hatake-fuuko-from-bones-beneath-her-feet) just add dot to all the spaces

In regards of this arc, I had to say that this arc is fairly dark. I'd love to make it all chirpy and happy, but let's face it: child soldiers, Uchiha massacre. I don't think I could make it chirpy and realistic.

Log bless my beta, the-anime-sage, for sitting me down and talking me through the Uchiha intrigue and basically letting rant.

Also, I'm sick. Again. This is so frustrating.

*cypress is usually used for coffins

** chan is often attached to children's names when calling them by their given names. It may also be used for babies, young children, and teenage girls , lovers, close friends, or any youthful woman. But since Shingo is neither, he's emphasizing the age gap here.


	8. Blood in the Sky: Part 4

**Notes:** So here's the interesting thing. The thing about honorifics is that in Narutoverse is that people of the same age group generally don't use them to each other. I actually dug the manga/anime to do research. So I was trying to figure out if I had been consistently that way and this is the funniest thing ever:

 ** _I have barely written a single scene that doesn't include an Uchiha (or refers to without code names)_**

I mean I make all the Uchihas use them because they're supposed to be an uptight, stuffy clan but, oh boy, not one single scene.. *sobs*

\- Sayami is an OC from another one-shot I've been working on for awhile where it goes in-depth into the mechanics of Uchiha clan. If you're interested in reading that, let me know, in any case, Sayami isn't going to be any bigger in her role than this.

\- Err, I realised that there's an issue in one of the scenes in chp 7. I have no idea how to fix it yet… but yes, I do know it exists.

\- This Arc was supposed to be 4 chps long. It keeps growing, halp.

* * *

"Fuuko, you're making dinner in my apartment. Why?" Genma sighs, frustrated. "Do you have any idea what would happen to me if Kakashi finds out you're making dinner in my apartment alone. Specifically me."

He slumps into the dining chair and cups his head with his hands. "Your brother is going to hunt me down with the evil glint in his eye and say ' _Genma-kun. I hope you ate a lot yesterday. She does cook a very good Nikujuga, doesn't she?'_ The next thing I know, there will be a rotting fish beneath the bed, the locks and knobs on my doors will be changed, my traps will be changed. And that's if I'm lucky! If I'm not lucky, he might decide to set Naruto on me and then I'll be fishing tadpoles from between my toes or waking up to the mask glued to my face."

Fuuko scoffs. "He's not that protective."

Genma spins his head up so fast that Fuuko is almost worried that he might have gotten whiplash. "He is! Kotetsu made the casual remark that you ranked 3 for the hottest Kunoichi in Konoha once and he's been on Guard duty ever since."

"But isn't Kotetsu and Izumo part of the Guard squad?"

He drops his head onto the table with a loud thud. "That's exactly my point."

"Well, I need a favour and I can't go to Kakashi," she sets the food on the table and hands Genma a bowl of rice.

He sighs. "Might as well eat well before I go and die." Chewing a pickled radish, Genma scratches his bandana. "Okay, spit it out. What do you need help with?"

"I need a place to crash for a few days and I was hoping-"

"NO!"

"Come on, Genma. It's just-"

"Absolutely not! If having dinner with you isn't bad enough, letting you stay in my apartment is going to be _far_ worse. At least Kotetsu and Izumo are chuunins, _I'm_ Anbu and Kakashi is an Anbu Captain." He shudders. "Whatever disagreement you have with Kakashi, you're just gonna have to suck it up and deal with it, _or_ you can go to Kurenai."

No, she really couldn't. Genma is Anbu, he can take care of himself and even if Kurenai _is_ one of Konoha's rising genjutsu masters, her skills in certain areas are lacking. Genjutsu alone isn't going to be enough were she to go up against Danzo…

Fuuko looks up from her rice bowl, her face pinched and somber. Genma leans forward, chewing on his senbon. "What is it that you _can't_ even go to your brother?"

Trust is a fickle thing; easy to lose, hard to earn, difficult to keep. Could she trust her brother to not tell on Danzo? The answer is more painful that she had hoped it would be.

Fuuko opens her mouth, not really sure where to begin or how, then closes it, teeth biting on her bottom lip. His eyes flicker to her hands clenching on the chopsticks. He drums his fingers on the table, a beat that seems random but in actuality is their team's code. _Deep shit? Are there watchers?_

Fuuko scratches her temple and then her neck. _Yes and yes high possibility._

She doesn't want to tell Genma too much, if Danzo can eradicate the Uchihas in the manga then Shiranui Genma would be nothing. Still she needs him, needs _someone_. Asuma isn't here but Genma is.

"Please," Fuuko says instead. There's a plaintive whine in her voice that she doesn't ever remember having before. "It's not like he's around much either. I can't stand being alone."

Rather than pressing for more answers, Genma just slouches forward in resignation, pulls his headband off and runs a hand through his hair. "Fine. As long as you keep Naruto's pranks away from me."

She grins at him, "deal."

-/-/-/-

"This is boring," Naruto sighs. "Can't you teach me something cool? Like a jutsu?"

Sasuke knocks Naruto sideways angrily, "Dobe! Do you not want Fuuko-neechan to train us anymore?"

"I'm not dead last anymore… _stop_ calling me that," he grouses.

"You can't even form a bunshin. Until you do, I'll keep calling you dobe."

"Shisui-nii says it's gra-du-eh-ion work anyway. We got three years before that. I'll get it by then. Believe it!" Naruto stretches his thumb out in a very iconic Gai way and Fuuko can feel Kakashi's chakra signature twitch in the trees.

"How youthful…" Fuuko deadpans and dodges the flying kunai from the trees.

"Ahh! Where did that kunai come from?" Naruto yells. "Sasuke! Someone's trying to kill nee-chan!"

"It's Ghost-niichan, dobe."

"We need to get back at him for nee-chan, teme. This is what we do-" The two boys squats facing each other with Naruto taking things out of his seemingly bottomless pocket.

Fuuko looks heavenward, wondering how the _then_ her had the patience to train them. Not even three hours of chakra control and he's already badgering to do something new and now this. Picking the two up by the collar, she shakes them and drop them onto the ground. "Concentrate! Chakra control exercises are important."

"But it's borrrring- and teme is already so good at it."

"Foundation is important, Naruto-kun. Sasuke-kun's family knows this and this is why he has been doing it probably since he can talk." She picks up a pinecone and puts it in the blond's hand. "The pine tree starts with this pinecone pushing its roots into the ground. The deeper the roots go, the bigger tree grow. Do you want to be a plant that bends and breaks in the wind or a tree with roots so deep that not even the biggest jutsu can break it?"

The blond stares at the pinecone, his small hands clenching it. "If you have a good foundation now," Fuuko explains, sitting down and ruffling his hair. "You'll be able to pick up and do more jutsus in the future. When I was a genin, Inoichi-sensei made me spend hours everyday for almost a year before I learnt my first jutsu. And you've seen Kakashi-niisan fight. He spent years building that kind of control."

"Will I ever get there?"

She turns, leaning her head on her hand. "With work and effort, definitely. The best things in life are always worth the effort to get. _Always_." Fuuko smiles at the two children who have a thoughtful look on their faces.

"That's not true, nee-chan," Naruto finally says, looking at her with his bright blue eyes. She remembers how Minato-san used to look at her the same way, the soft look in his eyes whenever he glanced at Kushina-san. She might not have been close to Minato-san and Kushina-san but the least she could do was look after their blond brat, the way they had done for nii-san and her.

"What's not true?"

"That the best things in life are through effort. Nee-chan, you're the _best_ thing in my life and I didn't put in any effort in it."

Fuuko squashes him against her chest, hugging him tightly. "That's because you're the thing that _I_ put effort to get." Fuuko remembers fighting the council, the court to get to be with him. Even if their orders bound her in a way that she's unable to let him live under her roof - nii-san would have a panic attack with the almost mirror image of Minato in their apartment - she at least can make sure he has food, clothing and all the training she can supply him.

Minato-san did the same for her, she would do the same for his son. Then she picks the two children up and slings them on her shoulders. "I think it's time for a break. Shall we find Shisui?"

"Are we going to prank him?" Sasuke asks. "I believe dobe has a very effective glitter bomb he's been dying to try."

"Teme, you only want to use it because you stuffed pink glitter in it too."

-/-/-/-

Sayami runs down the streets, staring in horror at all the Uchihas. Her mangekyou spinning erratically as she stumbles down the neatly paved street. Shisui drops Sasuke's hand, trusting Fuuko to look after his cousin and shunshins towards her.

Sayami barely makes it up the clan head's porch, her hands fumbling at the front gate. "Jii-san… Jii-san!" she calls out in a hysterical tone and falls to her knees, keening when Fugaku bursts through his front door, his sharingan spinning, weapon out to take down hostiles. "Dead- all of the Uchihas dead!"

"Sayami! Sayami!" Fugaku shakes her.

"Fugaku-sama! Is Sayami-chan-" Shisui asks and Sayami turns her head to take in Shisui coming up the path behind her with Fuuko and Sasuke in tow.

"Different dead. You're the closest," her red eyes staring intently at him. "You are going to die first." she whispers to Shisui and slumps into a dead faint. Her words sends spiral of fear down his spine. Was he like the catalyst? The beginning of the coup?

"Fugaku-sama…" Shisui speaks, unable to rouse any of the ready cheer he usually keeps for the head family. "She said I was going to die first-"

Fugaku motionss him to be quiet. Standing unburdened by Sayami's weight in his arms, he gentures with a sharp tilt of his head for them to follow. Mikoto unclasps the sandals off Sayami's feet, pulls the blanket, allowing Fugaku to slip her beneath the blanket.

"Is it the-" Shisui starts again and Fugaku cuts him off with a hand.

"Fuuko-san, if you would so kind to follow us to the kitchen." His eyes slide to Sasuke and with a loud sigh, he crouches in front of his second son. "Sasuke, I would not tell you that you _have_ to go up your room, but for your safety, I hope you would listen to me and do so. Would you do that for me?"

Sasuke swallows then nods, detaching his sweaty palm from Fuuko and heads upstairs. Shisui takes a moment to watch Fuuko slip her sandals off, watching her pale eyebrows twist into a knot. "You signed it, didn't you?" he asks when she approaches the kitchen door and steps in behind her.

"Yes," she replies. "Sasuke-kun is practically Naruto-kun's elder brother. Though it still baffles me that you'd pick me over anyone else."

A myriad of privacy seals light up as the door slides shut and a hush falls between the three Uchihas and one Hatake. "Fuuko-san, I believe you will have noticed the increased hostilities between the clan and Konoha in general. It should be no stretch of your imagination that my clan is trying to do incredibly stupid things."

Fuuko nods at this. "I heard of Sayami-san during the war."

There is almost no one who fought in the Third Shinobi War that did not hear of Sayami, Shisui thinks. Sayami is as much of a legend as the yellow flash of Konoha, Wicked Eye Fugaku. He's seen her once in action and thinks all the words used to describe her fighting do her no justice.

"Sayami has the third level of the Sharingan, the Mangekyou. As your brother has Obito-kun's sharingan, I am sure you are aware of that." At Fugaku words, Fuuko gives another curt nod. Her arms crisscrossing her front, body leaning against the wooden counter. "Each mangekyou has a special ability. Sayami's is what we call Shinigami. To explain it simply, she sees death."

"Like a seer?" Fuuko clarifies.

"Like a seer."

Perhaps what strikes Shisui the oddest is Fuuko's quick acceptance over the whole situation. Yes, she understand that means everyone in the clan is going to die. Yes, it means a clan execution. Yes, she's understands the trust put in her. Yes, she will not speak of it to anyone but those in this room. Not once did he sense hesitation or fear. All she asks is, "how soon?"

In which Fugaku breathes heavily, turning the furrows beneath his lip even darker. "Sayami's eyes can see up to a month's in advance. She does not make it a habit of seeing allies with it. She has said before that changing the future is almost impossible."

Fuuko hums. "Okay."

The three Uchihas blink at her answer. "That's it?" Mikoto presses. "Okay?"

Fuuko shrugs, an action reminiscent of Kakashi. "I guessed that things must be crashing for any of you to even consider me, an outsider, to take Sasuke in. Even if it's the last resort, most wouldn't."

"Fuuko-san, I might not have known Sakumo-sama well but Minato was one of my best friends. The day you and Kakashi became his foster children was the day you stopped being an outsider."

Fugaku hangs his head. "After the war, I was a clan heir nominee that had just won the clan head title. I could not take you two in after Minato-"

The Hatake shakes her head at his words. "But still you allowed Kakashi to keep Obito's eye even against the elders wishes. An eye for an eye, a favour for a favour-" she winces at her words. "Pun so unintended. I really _don't_ want another eye."

Fuuko nods at clan head and his wife as she brushes past Shisui. "If you need me more than sitting around and waiting for the worst to happen, you'll know where to find me," she tells them then shows herself out.

"That was... easy," Mikoto rubs a hand tiredly across her face.

Fuuko is one of the easiest person to get along, Shisui wants to say and remembers that he's not so sure of the late.

"Shisui, stay with Sayami. When she wakes…" Fugaku trails off and rubs the bridge of his nose. "When she wakes, inform me."

-/-/-/-

Fuuko needs proof that Danzo has been cultivating the tensions between Uchiha and the Village, irrefutable proof. It's the only reason why she would willingly infiltrate the Anbu Archives. What Fuuko needs isn't in this room specifically, this she already knows. Danzo isn't sloppy. You can't be sloppy and still be the leader of a rogue organization right under the Hokage's nose.

No, not this room. Fuuko sends her chakra out in a thin wave, letting it drift across the grooves in the floor as she sweeps through the shadows. Her chakra so minute and thin dissipates as it touches the cold stone but the portion that doesn't disappear finds older chakra - well worn chakra, seeped in the floor. Fuuko tracks the chakra trail and stops at a particular row. Her hands hover on what seems to be the locking mechanism.

What counts for irrefutable proof? Is it the sheets of bills to random merchants for exorbitant prices? The whispering of untruths by the various Root merchants she's found?

No going back. She promised herself she would do this.

The voice that echoes her thoughts has been strangely quieter, ever since that genjutsu Shisui weaved around her. Fuuko stares at the handle, trying to convince herself to pull it open. She could walk away from this, let everything happen like it should. It's not like it's _her_ family. Had she stopped counting Shisui as part of her makeshift family? Disappointment sank into her stomach. If she walks away now, Fuuko knows that she would always remember this moment.

Hatakes are not cowards. Hatakes descended from a branch of Samurais who specialised in using their chakra. They are proud and mighty, small but it always was quality over quantity.

Fuuko schools a breath. ( _Some time today would be great_ ) The voice prods and she jerks, startled.

No going back, Fuuko reminds herself then pulls open the door and slips through it.


	9. Blood in the Sky: Part 5

The Uchihas were standing along the compound's corridors, talking furiously and quietly to each other when Shisui comes back from a courier mission through the outposts.

"...execution I'll bet…" The Uchiha obaa-san from the cake shop says to the other.

"...doomed anyway. We might as well…"

Shisui catches snatchs of their conversations and is absurdly glad that he had decided to take the rooftop route so they can't see him. Have they heard of what Sayami said? He resist an urge to groan loudly.

Of course they had, stupid, Shisui scolds himself.

Sayami hadn't even attempted to lower her voice when she was running through the Uchiha district. He can't fault her for it no matter how he wants to. Through the careful inspection of the clan records, it is recorded that sharingan based visions and genjutsu can be disconcerting especially for the user who sees them as though experiencing them.

He drops into the Itachi's house, in search for Itachi and slips his sandals off at the genkan. Except there is no one in the house except Fugaku which is peculiar for an early Sunday morning. Itachi usually spends his Sunday mornings running katas with his little brother and working on various Uchiha specific disciplines.

Fugaku is sitting in the kitchen, his head bowed over a cup of tea.

"Fugaku-sama?"

Shisui casts his chakra sense further, thinking perhaps the two brothers might have gone out further this time. There is no reason for Itachi to be not at home. Itachi had returned right before he left for the courier mission. He knows that there are no slated missions for Itachi and with the way things are, he highly doubted Itachi would go anywhere.

"Where is Itachi?"

"I sent him on a month's long mission." Fugaku's eyes are red and dry, very much like how Shisui remembers his father before he passed. Uchiha men don't cry, he would tell Shisui even when his bottom lip wobbled and his sclera turned red from the effort of keeping the tears back.

"Why?"

Fugaku rims the cup with a finger, keeping his shuttered eyes on the cup of tea. "Sayami said that she didn't see his death or Sasuke's."

 _Different dead. You're the closest. You are going to die first._

"So you sent him away."

"I thought I could spare him the suspicion."

So you sent your son away so the rest of us could die here, Shisui thinks. "I see," he says.

Shisui can't fault him. Beneath the grumpy exterior and all bitterness, the Uchiha head is still only a man, a father. It's too late for Shisui and the others, it's not yet too late for Fugaku's sons.

"They're going to do something stupid." Shisui knows his clan all too well. It's easy to tell what they will do if they heard Sayami's predictions. Better men have tried to stop their predicted deaths and failed; better men with better people actively trying to stop their deaths have failed. And even though Fugaku-sama and Mikoto-sama never speaks of it, Shisui knows they feel that they failed Minato and Kushina all too keenly.

"I know. That is why I need you to tell the Hokage."

"Including on Sayami's prediction?" The last time Sayami was brought up to the Sandaime it was regarding the predicted death of Shikasei, the previous jounin commander. It hadn't gone well at all. Especially since Shikasei died, like she predicted.

Shisui can already imagine how the meeting with Sandaime would go. 'Sir, Sayami predicted that all the Uchihas are going to die and now the Uchihas want to revolt.' Yes, that would go fantastic, he thinks. If only Itachi was here and maybe he could come up with something. Or even Sayami, but Sayami is still locked down in the hospital from her panic attack and Itachi is apparently on a month's long mission. None of them can ask from the Hatakes more than they already have. It would be too perilous to. If Shisui's going to die, then the least that would soothe his dying moments is that Fuuko would be safe.

Fugaku turns the cup in his hand and taps the table with a finger. "No. Don't tell them about her prediction. We don't know how the Hokage would react if he heard about how Sayami's prediction became the tipping point."

"Yes, sir." Shisui nods and takes his leave.

-/-/-/-

Genma is waiting for him by the dango store. The location doesn't surprise Shisui much, except he's waiting for Shisui and Shisui has no idea why.

"Shisui," Genma says, getting up to fall next to him.

In spite of Shisui's nerves, he has compelled himself to take the pavement instead of the roof. It's usual for him to and he doesn't want any suspicion raised because of any out-of-the-norm behavior, especially when he's going to beg for a meeting with the Hokage and then inform him of a possible coup. His stomach churns at the thought of that.

"Genma. What can I do for you?" Shisui nods and hopes that the brunet isn't here for a favour or a mission. Rejecting a favour would be awkward and Shisui really doesn't want to come up with an acceptable reason why.

"Have you seen Fuuko?"

"Not recently." Shisui forces himself to not freeze at Genma's words. Oh kage, they hadn't thought through it, had they? Fuuko wouldn't have merely _sat at home_ and waited for them to _need_ her, she would have gone out and done it for them before they realised it they needed it.

"Well she begged to stay at my apartment for a few days... I know, it's stupid but she convinced me to anyway." Genma scratches the back of his neck with a grumble when Shisui shot him a look of disbelief. "She hasn't been back to her apartment, no one has been there for awhile. In any case, she's been missing for days. Five, to be specific. "

Shisui flinches. He isn't stupid enough to think that her disappearance is a coincidence especially when Sayami's incident was exactly five days ago.

"So you _do_ know something."

"Not precisely."

"But something," Genma pressed and catches him by the shoulder as they round into an empty alley.

Shisui doesn't know how to answer that without telling him the whole Uchiha situation.

"You listen here." Genma's fingers digs into his shoulder, his voice pitched low enough for only Shisui to hear. "I know things haven't been well between you and Fuuko, but she's caught up with something big. She came to me with _two_ Anbu watchers watching her. And then she disappears on the next night? She's not at her apartment, or yours, or out for a mission, and not _even_ in T &I which… was I had half-expected. So you are going to tell me exactly _what_ is going on because that's what _squad mates_ do for each other."

"It's not that I don't want to tell you. I have an _idea_ of what she might have been investigating but not precisely _what._ "

"Then _tell_ me what she might have been investigating," Genma says. There is a terse tone in his voice that Shisui can't fault him for. Genma is the squad's mother hen, protective mother bear and that's his instincts rising up.

"I'm sure you've noticed the tensions between the Uchihas and the village in general." Shisui pauses and continues at Genma's nod. "Well, it sounds like Fuuko got an idea to pursue that."

"That can't be it. It's just tensions, it'll fade eventually. And besides, even if she did, there wouldn't be anything that would cause her to disappear."

" _Just_ tensions?" Shisui barks a single, mirthless laugh. "Just _tensions_? Genma, I'm pretty damn sure that it's not _just_ tensions and I'm damn fucking sure it's not going to simply _fade._ "

"Yes it will. It would be like how the Shimura clan's did," Genma insists.

" _Just tensions_ wouldn't send an academy student home with a concussion! Kojiri-kun was playing ninja during recess with his class when he was cornered and beaten. His sensei and the academy medic didn't even call his parents to pick him up. They sent him home, with a grade two concussion, by himself! Just tensions wouldn't have caused Hiraji-kun's death by his own teammates!" Shisui shrugs away Genma's hand and takes a bumbling step backward.

"Shisui-"

"It wasn't the Uchihas that went back on their words. It was Konoha the whole time." He spins away and is up onto the roofs before Genma can stop him. Shisui has a meeting to go to and he has to get a bloody grip on himself before he meets the Hokage.

Oh kage, what has Fuuko found?

-/-/-/-

"Did you really think getting proof on a conspiracy is going to help them? Oh kage, how naive you are. They're traitors, as niidaime said, they don't know how to love, only hate." Danzo circles her.

"It only takes a moment of interaction with them to find out that's not true," Fuuko tells him. With only the bare minimum of her chakra left in her, Fuuko is having difficulty even raising her head. Still, she drags her head up to stare evenly into Danzo's single eye.

 _(Not yet._ ) Fuuko holds her limbs limp, her chakra tight to herself even when the manacle that's holding her down is pretty much broken.

"Another one, lost to the traitors. Brainwashed," Danzo heaves a loud sigh. The hairs on the back of her neck rising, her lips rearing into a snarl at his words. How many children has he brainwashed, Fuuko wants to throw those words back at him.

( _Not yet._ ) She wrestles the temptation down, Danzo doesn't know she knows _everything_. He only thinks that what evidence she has found is in his hands. He is not wrong, but he is not right either.

"Danzo-sama. The Hokage has requested for your presence at the Tower," a newly arrived Root says.

"Pity to end this quick. I have no further use for you, I suppose." Danzo motions to his guard in the corner, the guard kneels beside him. "Kill her if you have to. Make sure she doesn't tell anyone anything," he says to the guard as he leaves.

"Yes sir," the guard says and suddenly Fuuko can't breathe. Her chest stutters, her lungs panting for air. She knows that voice.

( _No, no, no!_ )

The guard steps forward. The dim light from the corridor illuminating the silver hair.

"Nii-san," Fuuko breathes.

She knows it's him beneath the blank white mask, she can feel his hands trembling as he pulls her from the chair, dragging her along the empty hallways. Maybe he's secretly freeing her. It has to be, she thinks. This is Kakashi for fuck's sake! This is her brother, the person that she would follow even to he throws her into an empty field - an execution field from the stench of blood seeped in the earth. ( _Betrayer!_ )

"Nii-san!" Fuuko repeats, getting up to her knees. Her dark grey eyes widening at the sight of him unsheathing his tanto. The world spins in her vision, ice dripping to her core as she struggles to gather herself. "Stop!"

Fuuko throws herself to the side, breaking the manacles apart with a swift movement. She sidesteps his lunge, then another. Throws herself to the left, away from the kunais that he threw. She is going to die by her own brother's hands, Fuuko realises with horrifying clarity. There is not enough chakra in her for anything powerful, no weapons on her to fight back, _nothing._ She fails to dodge Kakashi's ninjutsu and flies across the field, before rolling to a stop. There she lies still, ribs expanding and contracting, trying to suck wind back into her lungs.

Goddamn fucking Danzo knew it was her brother. He wants to break Kakashi, break her. Danzo did always seem to have a vendetta against her father. This, Fuuko remembers clearly from the snatches of interaction she had with Danzo.

Kakashi stalks towards her supine form and rolls her face up. She raises a shaky hand and rests it on his mask. He doesn't fight it when she tugs it off. A sob escapes her usually solemn brother, the harsh rasp of his breathing as Kakashi stares back at her.

"It's okay." Fuuko wipes his tears away. There is no fighting this. She thought that at the very least he would have protected her. If there was something Fuuko could have depended on, it would have been that.

"Fight me!" he roars, stabbing the earth with the tanto.

"No. I won't." She doesn't trust him but it doesn't mean she doesn't love him. She would rather die than to kill him.

"Fight me," Kakashi begs.

"It's okay, nii-san. I'll go anywhere you want me to go. Even to death," Fuuko tells him.

"No!" He hauls her up and thrusts the tanto, hilt first, into her hand. "You will fight me!"

Kakashi doesn't have to do this. There isn't anyone watching. If he was willing to let her walk away, she could, couldn't she? Palming an eye, Fuuko laughs hysterically. Only one of them could walk out here alive, only one.

The tanto falls from her hand. There is a helpless expression on Kakashi's face when Fuuko finally looks up. Enough chakra for _that_ jutsu and maybe more, she thinks.

"Please," he whispers.

She raises her hands, pulsing her chakra as she forms the hand seals, tightening her chakra around her. _Raikiri_! Her right hand crackles to light, the sound of a thousand birds deafening her to everything else except the thumping of blood in her ears. Fuuko covers the distance between her brother and her, her hand outstretched, plunging it through his chest.

Then the Raikiri splutters and dies.

"I'll take it from here, nii-san."

-/-/-/-

"Hokage-sama," Shisui kneels. His head bowed. "Even with the inclusion of other clans in the KPM and the increased prominence of Uchihas in public service, the Elders are not satisfied…" he pauses, knowing the next words that Fugaku bid him to tell the Hokage would doom the clan.

Shisui raises his head, his black eyes dark and void of emotions like a true shinobi should be. He will wear the guilt for the remainder of his days, this Shisui knows as he continues. "Fugaku-sama does not believe the Elders would be culled in any other way and has moved Operation Yūakari forward."

Danzo raises an eyebrow. "Aren't Uchihas reputed to be immune to genjutsu?" He asks Shisui.

"Yes…" There is something about Danzo that raises his hackles, but he can't not answer a Council Elder's question. "...but my sharingan has an additional level. It's called mangekyou and my mangekyou has the ability called Kotoamatsukami. It is a subtle mind-controlling genjutsu ability that only my mangekyou has."

Danzo leans forward, hands clasping on his cane. "And you believe it will work?"

Shisui doesn't, but he didn't let his doubts colour his words. "Yes."

Hiruzen sighs. "Very well. When will Yūakari be carried out?"

"Tonight."

There is the Yamakaji contingency after the Yūakari and that leaves an even worse taste in his mouth than Yūakari. Shisui hopes that Yūakari will succeed, it _has_ to. Yamakaji is far worse than Yūakari.

"If it fails, we'll have to activate Yamakaji. You realise that," Hiruzan tells him. There is regret in the Hokage's voice, no shinobi wants to execute the entire clan for the mistakes of a few.

Fukagu's plan should have worked without activating Yūakari. Should have. He had even consulted the Naras for the creation of it, the Naras never fail. Shikaku had double checked the integration plans. Fuuko found something and went missing.

"I understand, Hokage-sama."

Someone is out to get the Uchihas, someone in the _Council_ is out to get the Uchihas. Shisui jumped out of the office, bouncing across the rooftops. Shikaku's Hikaru plan should have worked. If the Nara's plan failed, it means someone had interfered enough to make it fail. That means that there is a high probability that Yūakari will fail too. Yamakaji isn't a backup plan, not a backup plan to save the _Uchihas_ at least, it's a backup plan to save _Konoha._

Think Shisui, think!

Shisui lands in one of Uchiha's training grounds, surrounded by the tall looming trees. The sun has set by the time he's finished the meeting with the Hokage and the Council. The rising moon casts an eerie shadow across the clearing. The plan is to go to the Uchiha family meeting and use his mangekyou, the plan is to control all the dissents, calm them and attempt to remove the disagreeable elements. The plan is to..

He cups his eye. The plan is hinged on his eye. If Yūakari is to fail then it would start with his eye. Shisui swivels around to rush back to the compound or somewhere safe only to stop short at a silhouette. There is no mistaking _that_ silhouette.

"Danzo-sama."

A frisson claws down his back. Someone in the _Council_ is out to get the Uchihas and that someone is Danzo.

"Shisui-kun. Have you thought, what if you used your eye to get the Clan to cooperate and the village doesn't change?"

"We will make it change together with the Clan Heads."

"A distrust like that won't go away so easily."

Shisui sees it now. The Naras had been backing up on the Uchihas, the Naras along with the Akimichi had been supporting the integration by adding their members to Konoha's Military Police, enhancing the Uchihas trustworthiness by teaming up with them. The only reason it hasn't worked is because the Shimuras must have been countering them, feeding the distrust. Danzo isn't saying that the distrust _won't_ go away so easily, Danzo is telling him that he _will not_ stop.

"Is that a threat?"

"I'm merely stating a possibility," Danzo says. His gnarled fingers taps his cane. "There are many outcomes to a situation, many solutions to a problem. But me? I do not think your _eye_ will solve it." Danzo's lone eye lingers on Shisui's face and less to Shisui but more to himself, he continues, "No. I don't think it'll solve anything."

Shisui tenses, jumping backwards to avoid the shurikens from the multiple blank masked Anbus that appears around Danzo. Hands flashing, he takes a deep breath and channels chakra into his lungs. _Katon: Gokakyu no jutsu!_

A ball of fire churns through the air towards Danzo and the Anbu runs through handseals. Water shoots out from their mouth, neutralizing the fire. He dodges the senbon, taking a stab through his gut, catching the wrist of an oncoming punch from another smaller figure. Shisui swings the small figure into the tree and wrenches himself off the tanto, shunshining to end of the field.

Pumping chakra into his hand, Shisui crushes the trachea of one. He darts across the field, taking two senbons to his back. The Anbu draws his tanto, flinging a kunai, shunshining into Shisui's guard. His sharingan comes to life as he dodges. Shisui weaves his chakra around the Anbus, entrapping them in a sharingan genjutsu. He dodges another blow with a dispersal of crow clones, sliding backwards to avoid a Mizurappa.

The senbon is poisoned. Why is he not surprised? Shisui can feel his consciousness dimming on the edges. He ducks a kick, sweeping another Anbu off his feet and spearing a kunai through the Anbu's neck.

 _Different dead. You're the closest. You are going to die first._

He has to… has to…

Shisui falls to the ground, gasping. He raises himself on his forearms, struggling to stay awake.

Has to…

Danzo strolls towards him, the tapping of his cane reverberating in Shisui's ears.

"Well then, I guess you won't be needing your eyes once you're dead." Danzo says, stretching his fingers out towards Shisui's face.

Has too...

* * *

 **Notes:** I've been thinking if I should change the rating from T to M. What's your opinion?

Yuakari - 夕明り - Actual meaning means lingering light of evening  
Yamakaji - 山火事 - WildFire / Bush Fire

I left it in Japanese means the meaning was more poetic. If it was translated into english, it'd would have been Evening Light and that's not quite the same as Lingering light of the evening

Before I forget, I have a tumblr at Luna-orlha. And I have _fanart_ of Fuuko and Kakashi! Woo! Link is on my profile though it might take awhile to update :)


	10. Blood in the Sky: Part 6

Fuuko bursts out of the Root headquarters. There isn't much time left. She has to bring the information to the Hokage, has to stop Danzo, have to stop the massacre. The tell-tale bills, the mission orders are all in the seal sitting on crook of her hip. It might be enough for the Hokage to convince that Danzo is up to no good, but knowing them, that wouldn't stop the Uchihas from doing something stupid. She can do this. She _has_ to succeed. If she doesn't, then Kakashi's sacrifice would be all for naught.

Hoping to converse what chakra she has left, Fuuko falls back to her chakra senses, throwing her chakra sense as far out as she can. Shisui isn't in her range unless he's dead. Please don't be dead, she reiterates to herself. Fuuko bites her thumb, channeling chakra as she slaps her hand onto the ground.

 _Kuchiyose no Jutsu!_

Five dogs appears in a poof of smoke.

"Yo, Boss." Bakushou, the border collie barks.

"Boss!" The alsatian and the beagle wags their tails excitedly. Unlike her nii-san, she doesn't summon her ninken much. She's not much of a Hatake having not been brought up by a Hatake.

"Eiji, Susumu, Mitsuru, I need you to track Shisui down. You still remember his scent?" The beagle, the labrador and the alsatian bark in affirmation and split off, with Eiji, the beagle leading the way. Knowing that the dogs would notify her when they get a strong scent of her, Fuuko climbs up the building, jumping across the buildings with the border collie in tow. "Bakushou, when we find Shisui. I need you and Mitsuru to guard him."

Bakushou frowns at her. "Boss, what about you?"

"I'll be fine," she says, but after the fight with Kakashi and the summoning, she doesn't really have it in her for anything else. There is a heavy feeling in her throat that refuses to go away no matter how much she swallows. She didn't kill her brother. She _didn't kill her brother,_ she screams in her mind, struggling to pull herself together, but the genjutsu shadow of her brother lying there in a pool of blood haunts her.

It is just a genjutsu.

She didn't have a choice. It wasn't nii-san that tried to kill her, it was a seal. A seal made nii-san attack her. So she had to weave a genjutsu to trick the seal.

It is just a genjutsu.

 _"_ _Remember, Fuuko." Kurenai smiled and tapped her forehead. "Genjutsus_ can _kill. With a potent genjutsu, a body that believes it's dead can will itself to death."_

It was just a _weak_ genjutsu. Her brother would be fine. She sucked at genjutsus, she couldn't have possibly casted a strong enough one that nii-san couldn't figure out. Fuuko tracks the Genma's signature and vaults through the window into the living room.

"For crying out loud, can't you guys use the damn door..." Genma trails off and stops, the senbon in his mouth clattering to the ground. "Fuuko! I was looking for you, where have you been? You were gone for days and then Shisui refused to tell me where you were so I had to ask Raido and-"

"Where is Shisui?"

"-Tenzo and… Shouldn't you know where Shisui is, after all, he did call you for me?" He takes in the layer of dirt on her skin, the bruises across her face and down her neck, the torn uniform. "What happened? Where-"

"I have no time for this," she cuts him off curtly, waving his glowing hand away. Jumping out the window, she bounces off the opposite building and up onto the roof, casting her chakra sense out as she jumps towards the Uchiha compound with Bakushou and Genma following her now.

Shisui shouldn't be in the Root base or the Hokage tower. So that's out. Then there is Danzo being summoned by the Hokage, why? The Hokage rarely summons the Council. Anything short of a war happening, the Hokage would have never willingly summoned the Council. Deductions lead to the high possibility of Shisui telling the Hokage about the Uchiha situation. The Hokage summoned the Council because the possibility of a revolt _is_ a war. And assuming that the conversation went just like the anime that means Danzo knows about Shisui's eye...

Oh god. The training grounds.

Fuuko slows down beside Genma and reaches into his kunai pouch where she knows his soldier pills are.

"Fuuko, what-"

Would she need reinforcements? She highly doubts she can even take a Root Anbu in her state. Well with enough soldier pills, she probably could. No! Prioritise, Fuuko! She scolds herself.

Priorities: stop Danzo from getting the eye, get the eye back if he did, save Shisui.

She takes a deep breath, releasing the tension in her chest as she breathes out and pops two soldier pills into her mouth. Fuuko sends out another chakra search, this time catching Shisui's signature. It's in the training grounds alright and he's not alone.

She pumps more chakra into her feet. Bakushou runs past her to join the other three ninken which are now fighting off blank masked Anbus. Pulling out the tanto Kakashi gave her, she jumps into the fray, letting her thoughts go into the backseat and strange presence move to the foreground. The tanto crackles with lightning chakra as she pumps chakra into her limbs, augmenting and changing the speed of her movements. She runs through the first Root, slicing the arm off the second. Lunging and dodging the multiple senbons.

Bakushou bites down on the Root's arm, dragging him to the ground as Mitsuru, the alsatian breaks the other arm.

"Guard Shisui!" Fuuko yells to her ninken, sweep kicking a Root down and driving her tanto into his chest. Bakushou growls his consternation but breaks away with Mitsuru to join Eiji and Susumu in front of Genma and Shisui. Fuuko turns to catch Shisui draped over Genma with an empty hole for an eye. His eye!

"Goddamnit!" She swings her tanto angrily, piercing into the thigh of another. "Get him to the hospital!" Without waiting for a response, she shunshins through the Root Anbu, chasing after the retreating chakra signature of Danzo.

 _Lightning release: Denko Sekka_

Fuuko wraps her lightning chakra around her body, outstripping her chakra augment speed until everything is a blur. The first time she used this, it had been difficult to keep up with the positioning, but she doesn't need this _positioning_ in this situation. If killing Danzo would free the Uchihas and free her brother, she'd gladly do it.

"Danzo!" she screams, thrusting her lightning charged tanto.

Danzo turns at the last moment, letting her tanto barely graze his kimono. "I should have guessed that you were the stronger of the two Hatakes. I should have gone ahead and recruited you instead."

"I wouldn't have accepted it."

"Why do you know that Kakashi _accepted_ it?" He smiles.

She tightens her grip on her tanto, the lightning charge dissipating. "What…?"

"Did you really think Kakashi would have joined?"

"What?" No, he's right. Kakashi wouldn't have joined. Why would he? He had her to depend on, it wouldn't have made sense and while not all siblings were close to each other, Kakashi and her are known to be uncomfortably close. But why was he telling her this?

"In the end, you killed your own brother to save your own skin who joined Root to protect you." Danzo peels the bandage away, revealing an armful of Sharingan.

"How…" How had he gotten so many Sharingan? ( _Or more like_ _why?)_ It's not like the Sharingan was some game boosting item that stacked on each piece. Fuuko's pretty damn certain that having more than a pair isn't going to make him suddenly see the future ( _unless he has Sayami's eyes_ ). The thought churns in her stomach and a roaring sound fills her ears, heightening her senses. Fuuko remembers the helpless look on Kakashi's face, the way he forced her to fight him. Kakashi protected her, the Uchihas protected them after Obito's death, after Minato's death. And all of them suffering because of this cruel man.

 _Kuchiyose no Jutsu!_

Fuuko slaps her hand onto the ground, summoning the rest of her pack. She's not a true Hatake, not the way Kakashi and Sakumo were. They had tracking ninken to complement their senses. Fuuko, having never been brought up by any other Hatake but Kakashi, didn't have trained senses like Kakashi.

Oh no, she doesn't have a _tracking_ ninken pack, she has a _hunting_ ninken pack.

Four other dogs appears beside her, the ovcharka almost reaching her shoulders step forward as more Root Anbu land beside Danzo. She raises her tanto, charging it with lightning again, eyes rising defiantly to meet Danzo's.

"Boys, chow time."

-/-/-/-

Kakashi knew joining Root was a bad idea. He knew that the start. Danzo had approached him in hopes of poaching them while they were both deep in their grief and he had seen that gleam in his eyes. Minato-sensei had spoken enough about Danzo to necessitate a certain wariness for that man. Not to mention that there hadn't been much of a choice. Sandaime needed a man on the inside and his loyalty is undisputed. Neither of them had expected a seal that blocked him off from telling the Sandaime anything.

Groaning, Kakashi circulates his chakra to break from the genjutsu. His sister's genjutsu was as hopeless as he remembered. Had it not been for him willing succumbing to it, he would have broken free even before she finished weaving it. She tried. At least the genjutsu had bought them time.

He stares at the rock ceiling for a few moments, remembering the look of Fuuko's face. How horrified he had been when she whispered that she would go anywhere _he_ wanted her to go. Fuuko has always been the indomitable one in the family. She pulled through after witnessing their father's suicide; even when Inoichi-san had said that because of her prolonged exposure to the body of their father, she might never be the same again, when Inoichi-san doubted she could ever be a shinobi, doubted that she could ever overcome her trauma of corpses, she had pulled through all the same. Where the loss of Obito had crippled him, Fuuko climbed right back up after the loss of her own teammate. To find out that she is willing to put herself down for him, to give up everything at his command. It makes him rethink of her mental strength. Maybe she isn't as strong as he thought.

Kakashi sits up and runs a hand down his face. He wonders if things would ever be the same with Fuuko again. It's not every day that your brother forces her into a death match. He's lucky that Fuuko thought of the genjutsu, Kakashi doesn't think he has it in him to kill his own imouto.

Failure to complete his mission would be a cheap price when compared to the alternative. He breathes deeply, enjoying the act of breathing.

Broken bones, torture and confinement would be better over killing his imouto any day.

-/-/-/-

Fuuko was feeling dead on her feet. Report, food, sleep, grief all trying to take its priority in her mind right now. She had barely come out of the fight alive, had it not been for Susumu jumping in front of Danzo's kunai.

She chokes back a sob at the memory of Susumu.

Genma would guard Shisui, he would immediately pick up on the empty eye socket and extrapolate from there. Though who he would pick to share the guard duty with would be worrying. That is, assuming that she has energy for that. She doesn't, not even the energy to react when Naruto skids into her with a loud 'oof'.

"Nee-chan!" He wraps his bony arms around her, pressing his face into her very filthy shoulder. "I was looking all over for you."

Did he notice her disappearance? Days, Genma mentioned. How long, though? "Naruto-kun?" she asks through cracked lips. A cup of water is starting to look far more appealing than food or sleep at the moment.

"Nee-chan! Sasuke and I were setting a prank for Mizuki-sensei and then this white Anbu told him to follow him. I never seen an Anbu mask without colour. You told me to trust my instincts and I thought something wasn't right so I told Sasuke not to go. We ran and then… and then…"

Fuuko wraps her arms around, rocking the blond boy. "Where are your Anbu guards?"

"We ditched them before we started the prank and when the white Anbu took Sasuke, I couldn't find the guards" he hiccups. "No one would listen to me! Itachi-niisan is on mission and I couldn't find Shisui-niisan-"

Fuuko raises her head at the flare of chakra signals the Anbu guards arriving and with some discrete chakra prodding and furious Anbu hand signs, she relieved that _at least_ the Anbu aren't Danzo's. With everything happening, she can't imagine having to worry about Naruto with a Root anbu in disguise as a normal Anbu.

"Naruto-kun, Naruto-kun," she calls the boy sharply. "Listen to me carefully."

Fuuko ducks her head, making sure her words cannot be overheard or lipread. "I need you to go to the Hokage and tell him what happened and then make sure you follow his orders and stay with your guards at all times okay? Don't worry about Sasuke, I'll find him. Promise me you'll stay with your guards."

At his tentative nod, she holds him tightly and wonders if it's going to be her last time hugging him. The last fight with Danzo had left her worse for wear. She definitely has several cracked ribs and her wrist is possibly fractured and that's not including the cuts and bruises, and the physical along with chakra exhaustion threatening to pull her under.

Oh god, Susumu died. She couldn't protect her own ninken. Was she strong enough to protect Sasuke and Naruto?

Naruto picks up her melancholic mood and buries his arms even more fiercely. She presses a kiss in his messy hair, takes a breath and then unwraps Naruto octopus arms from her. "I love you Naruto-kun," she tells him and ruffles his hair. Her little brother.

"Nee-chan…" Her little blond brother whimpers and clutches the edge of his shirt. Fuuko wouldn't be surprised if he's caught on more than her mood. The Kyuubi was good at that, wasn't he?

"Remember I told you." She lifts her hand to the Anbu then shunshins to the Uchiha compound. Not even pausing to remove her sandals, Fuuko staggers into the kitchen where the only two chakra signatures are.

"Danzo took Sasuke-kun," she gasps. White dots dance across her vision. Definitely used too much chakra, Fuuko thinks as her grip on the door's edge loosens.

"...put her in the guest room…" Someone thin but strong carries her through the hallway and into a room.

Oh sleep, yes sleep would be wonderful and she's out cold before the person can tuck the blanket in.

* * *

 **Notes:** We're winding down to the end scene of this arc. If my muses permits me, next chapter will be the last chapter of the arc.


	11. Blood in the Sky: Part 7

Fuuko thinks the world is terrible when she wakes. Her body is full recharged but there is this heavy feeling in her chest. The shadows of the window looms across the floor as she sits up and places her bare feet on the cold wooden floor. There is a set of clothes and a cup of water on the bedside table below the Uchiha fan on the wall. She looks out of the window. The tall Hashirama trees shading the house giving the room a distinct chill.

So she made it to the Uchiha compound and judging from the trees outside the window, the clan head's house.

The fight on the training ground had been a blur. There is blood crusted beneath her nails, then Fuuko remembers. She had pursued Danzo to retrieve Shisui's eye, only to find him with a whole arm full of Sharingans. Sharingarm, her mind muses and she laughs hysterically. Fuuko laughs and laughs until she's out of breath. Then she laughs some more.

"Fuuko-chan?" the lilting tenor asks through the wooden door, before opening it.

"He stole Shisui's eye. He stole an _armful_ of Sharingan," she tells Mikoto as the Uchiha sits on the bed.

"An _armful_?" Mikoto repeats, fingers clasping over her lips. "An _armful_? Who?" The Uchiha takes a tremulous breath and closes her eyes, hands gripping tightly on her kimono. " _Danzo_?" she spits the name out like acid through her teeth.

Fuuko looks away, acutely aware of the painful sound rasp of Mikoto's breathing. She could have stopped this, she thinks. Made a move earlier, done something besides… besides… She fists the blanket, the joy of being able to move so easily still has not dissipated even after all the months that she's been here. If she had moved earlier, she might have been able to save Sasuke. Was Shisui dead now? Had she not changed anything?

"I'm sorry." The reborn woman drops her head, feeling like she should have been able to do more to stop all this from occurring. "I…" Words that she wanted to say, wouldn't come. Words that wouldn't be enough.

"He stole _eyes_ from my clansmen, and now he has also taken Sasuke," Mikoto finally says, her voice is cold. The fear and horror that was on her face are now wiped clean, except the trembling hand belies her emotionless state. "If it's anyone's fault, it's Danzo."

Mikoto stands, squaring her shoulders, her hands no longer shaking. "Get dressed, there is lunch in the kitchen. We will leave in twenty minutes."

Fuuko doesn't look up even after Mikoto leaves, staring at her hands like they would offer some form of explanation or comfort. She needs to get up and save Sasuke and hopefully destroy Shisui's eye.

Why is it always her? The thought floated to the top before she can push it away.

She strips, gingerly wearing the dark anbu uniform that someone must have retrieved from her apartment because it fits. The white armor sits snugly around her chest and she smooths the velcro, fingers checking the armor for chips or cracked parts. Fuuko takes a deep breath, hand resting on the door. Here she is, standing in the safety while her little brother had been taken by the big bad wolf, Shisui might be dead, her brother might be dead and all she can think of is 'why her?' She swallows the rush of guilt and slides the door open, bare feet padding silently through the hallway.

"...because that's how we're going to find him."

"I'm just saying that Mekugi-san told me that Danzo hasn't been seen since two days ago."

"Sarute-san said that there were traces of him near training ground three."

Fuuko slides the door open and they fall silent. There is a group of Uchihas in the kitchen, she recognizes a few. Izumi steps forward with a grim smile and a plate of onigiri. "Fuuko-san."

"Izumi-san." She takes the plate of onigiri. Though not feeling hungry, Fuuko forces the onigiri down. She will need it for strength to rescue Sasuke.

"It's not like we can _ask_ the Inuzukas to track a _council member_ for us," Kashira snorts.

"Habaki-kun is our best sensor… we could…"

"We could do a lot of things, but it'll take time _which we don't have_. How long do you think it'll take _Danzo_ to harvest his eyes? And rogue anbus? Genma-san said they were really short, like child short. How many prodigy children do you know that can become anbu before hitting the growth spurt? I'll bet every single ryo I have that they were stolen kids."

The Uchiha that speaks is surprisingly very on the dot, not that Fuuko is supposed to know about the stolen children. Fuuko swallows her onigiri, clearing her throat to catch their attention. "I know where Danzo's headquarters is…" she tells them quietly.

"Good," Mikoto says from behind her.

There is a saying in Konoha, you can force an anbu into retirement but you can never force a retirement into an anbu. Seeing the way the Uchiha matriarch step into the kitchen, dressed in black anbu uniform and seal-reinforced porcelain armor like her, strikes Fuuko hard. The lithe muscles that are usually hidden by her kimono are now prominent. Mikoto, who was retired for fourteen years clearly had not stopped training. Mikoto tosses Fuuko her kodachi and her mask.

"Izumi-chan, Kashira-kun, Tsubachi-san, you're with us. Hamoni-chan, Hadashi-san, Sageo-kun, you're better in genjutsu than the rest of us, so you're staying here to assist Fugaku."

Fugaku only nods at her words. The other six straighten up at her words.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"We don't know how long Fugaku will be able to hold the genjutsu down. When it goes down, you know what to do. Those with me…" Mikoto slides her old anbu mask over her face. The red streaks curved down the white mask seemed to denote mongoose features. "We're going to go in, get Sasuke and get out. Questions?"

They shake their head and don the anbu gear that Mikoto has retrieved for them.

Fuuko slides her mask on, strapping her kodachi on the small of her back. Fugaku grips Mikoto's forearm ( _an old warrior's greeting/goodbye_ ), Mikoto presses against his forehead then pulls away. Her voice stripped of any emotion, impersonal like her Anbu mask, "take care."

"Go strong," Fugaku replies. He reaches out and grips Fuuko's forearm. "Go strong," he repeats the traditional anbu farewell.

"Take care," she says.

Please, if there's anyone out there. Let her bring them back alive, Fuuko begs.

-/-/-/-

Just three levels down the creepy headquarters, they trip on an invisible security seal.

A bit of belated reaction, better late than never, Fuuko supposes.

She takes a deep breath then surrenders her control, letting the phantom reflexes do their work. Her kodachi goes cleanly through the first and before she can advance to the next, he drops dead from a senbon through the eye. Fuuko has never worked with Izumi or any of the four Uchihas, but their movements are well-practiced and she knows how Uchiha katas work.

They make it another level down, with Fuuko sending out her chakra sense to find Sasuke. The chakra signature of Sasuke worries her.

"It's… muddy," Fuuko tells Mikoto as she vaults over the Root-nin, breaking his neck with a twist.

"What do you mean by _muddy?_ " Mikoto hisses. She pulls her chakra threads taut, snapping them tightly around another Root-nin. Izumi takes the two behind Mikoto with her senbon. Fuuko flickers backwards slicing another down as the four make their way further down the hallway, tripping pretty much every security seal that there is.

It's pretty pointless to go in covertly if everyone already knows they're there.

"Most people have crystal clear chakra signatures…" Fuuko starts to explain and then promptly runs out of air when she's forced to drop into a roll, barely dodging Kashira's fireball that goes over her head and incinerates the shinobi behind her. "Basically, either they did something to Sasuke or… well… he's not alright. Anyway, they're moving from us so we need a faster way to go down."

They tried using earth jutsus to dive through the floors but there's something on the floors and walls that prevents it from being scratched by jutsus. It's pretty smart. No one would build an underground headquarters only to have some earth element enemy-nin simply bury everyone alive.

Mikoto looks thoughtfully, her sharingan coming to life. One tomoe, two tomoe, three tomoe then the mangekyou glowing. She grabs them as red chakra builds up around them. Fuuko hears the sharp inhale of the other two Uchihas and the awed gasp from Izumi then remembers Mikoto.

"You're Susanoo no Konoha."

"I heard my mother telling me that story before," Izumi says.

Mikoto scoffs, slamming her susanoo's fists into the ground below them. The first smash breaks the walls into small bits, the second smash cracks the floor and the third, Fuuko can't hear beyond the thumping of blood in her ears and the mantra spinning in her head, I'm going to die and it's going to be Mikoto-san's fault.

They drop four floors and crash a party of definitely A-rank Root, judging from the strength of the chakra signatures. They are getting closer. This time Mikoto takes point, plowing through them with her susanoo.

How many Root anbu have been festering under Konoha?

Fuuko dodges the fire web that Tsubachi sends over her head, sweeping the feet out of a Root Anbu and drives her kunai into his throat. She slices anbu after anbu. The blood sprays over her face and apart from wiping her eyes, Fuuko doesn't make a move to clean the rest. There is a coppery tang in her mouth.

The civilian part of Fuuko squirms uncomfortable. All she wants to do is stop and retch, except she can't. The force that drives her practically holds and moves her like a mindless marionette. Her body launches herself at another, kodachi skewering through one and turning it around to use the body as a shield against a fireball.

Please stop. ( _We have to save Sasuke-kun._ )

The sound of anger roars through her head, deafening her, but it doesn't diminish her battle readiness. It wouldn't matter anyway. She isn't in control of her body now. Fuuko can feel the ghostly hands reach into her muscles and bones, throwing jutsus left and right that _she doesn't even know,_ twisting away, advancing and dropping back in some kind of macabre dance.

That's when it goes wrong. Tsubachi takes a wind blade through his chest and collapses on the ground, dead. Izumi brings up the back but even Fuuko can see that she's exhausted. She pops another soldier pill, spewing another fireball that sets the wooden doors on fire. It buys them a breather, letting them flicker into a large room where Sasuke lies on the ground.

-/-/-/-

Naruto is scared. Naruto thinks it's his fault that Sasuke was taken. Sasuke hadn't wanted to prank Mizuki, there was a chakra lesson that he was interested in and he wanted to stay for it, but Naruto had enticed him with the promise of a fish-smelling, fluorescent pink glitter that wouldn't be washed off for days for Shisui-niisan.

Jiji tells him that it's not his fault but deep inside, Naruto knows it is. It was him who shook his anbu guards off, it was him who planned the prank. Sasuke would have been safe in school.

Naruto watches the sun crawl across the hardwood floor, trying to muster some appetite to dig into the lunch the anbu brought him. Nee-chan is out there finding Sasuke, she'll find him. If there's anyone out there that can, it'd be nee-chan, he tells himself. He takes a bite of the ramen, now soggy from his deliberations.

"They'll be fine. Jiji said he would find them," he says, hoping the words would at least ease the sinking feeling.

But it doesn't.

-/-/-/-

The explosion that occurs when they remove Sasuke takes out Izumi's leg. Lying prone on the ground, the Uchiha gathers her chakra, breathing a whole curtain of flames, cutting off their pursuers.

Fuuko snatches Sasuke out of Mikoto's arms when Mikoto turns to smash her susanoo's fists down. The Hatake bounces off the wall, spearing another white masked anbu. She lets Kashira take care of the rest and speeds ahead with Sasuke slung across her shoulders.

Then the trio halts to a stop as smoke fills the hallway.

Fuuko doesn't need a visual to recognize the chakra signature. It is bitter. She will never forget the fermented bitter gourd chakra taste. Feeling the multiple chakra presences at their back, the Hatake had guessed that things would have led to this.

"Danzo."

"Hatake Fuuko. Uchiha Mikoto." His steps, echoed by the tapping of his cane, are meant to be intimidating, but she isn't scared. Beneath the surface of her mask, the thin ripple of apathy rises to the surface, enveloping her. Here, she isn't Hatake Fuuko or the lightning blade of Konoha. She is Wolf.

She flashes forward, her kodachi unsheathing in a movement too fast. A white blur in the shadows of the Root hallway. Danzo's katana blocks and breaks under the weight of her chakra infused blade.

"Are you going to kill me?" he brazenly asks despite the cold metal biting into the side of the neck. His eye is calculative with a unveiled smugness. "You'll never get your precious Uchiha back if you kill me."

"We already have him," Mikoto says.

Danzo tuts. "I never said about finding. I never doubt that you wouldn't. But we wouldn't want the precious Uchiha's spare to _die_ , now would we?"

"What would Hokage-sama say if he knew what you have done?"

His lips stretches across his cold, scaly skin. "Are you planning to tell him that you killed all those loyal Konoha shinobi too?"

"Under the light of your betrayal, I'm sure we would be pardoned. Regardless, I care not for my own self."

"Yes, just the little Uchiha, but if you kill me, that would be you killing Sasuke-chan too." He unwinds the bandage around his wrist to show them a seal. Fuuko knows enough of Fuuinjutsu to know that it's a blood-linked explosive seal.

"So you see, you can't kill me if you want him alive." Danzo picks up his cane. A smirk, coy and triumphant tugs his face. He has won and he knows it. "There, there. See I don't like to waste good things," he soothes. "You want little Sasuke-chan. And I, I want-"

Mikoto pounces with a snarl, flattening him to the ground with her susanoo. She pulls his arm out and smiles a toothy smile at Fuuko. "It's a good thing we don't need him alive, _now do we?_ "

Immediately, Fuuko understands, her body doesn't hesitate. She lifts her kodachi, the white lightning sparking off the blade, severing his arm straight through and tosses it to Kashira who channels chakra around the seal, keeping it alive.

Mikoto gleefully rips the eyes out of Danzo, burning each eye into ashes. "As the spouse to the Clan head, former heir to the Uchiha branch head, descendant of Uchiha Madara, third of the ruling bloodline and therefore with the full authority of the Uchiha clan, I hereby proclaim you, _guilty_ of dojutsu theft and hence sentence you to _death!_ "

She stabs him through the heart and sets his body on fire. Her susanoo blocks off all attempts of Danzo's ninja trying to save him and though blood steadily trickles from her right eye, Mikoto watches the body burn until there is nothing but ashes before turning to the Root soldiers.

"Do you still fight for him even though he is dead?"

They don't.

-/-/-/-

Naruto hears the alarm bells go off at midnight. Every Konoha shinobi and civilian is taught the different types of alarms in school and even without being told, he knows that _any_ alarm going off means serious business is going down.

Owl appears beside him, dragging him from the windows while Crow seals the windows and reinforces the walls. Under normal circumstances, his anbu should have fallen in with all the currently available shinobis as the alarm dictates. Or perhaps they don't, Naruto has never heard an alarm go off outside class.

"Do you know what's going on?" Naruto asks. Owl only ruffles his hair and lets him sink into his side.

And the siren just goes on and on.

-/-/-/-

"Yesterday a coup occurred at midnight..."

Kakashi stares up on the stage, his face is blank, his mind not really translating the sounds into the words.

"...On the counts of treason, Uchiha Fukagu, Uchiha Shingo, Uchiha Haguchi, Uchiha Tenma, Uchiha Munegu..."

Gai stands beside Kakashi, his hand gripping Kakashi's arm tightly as Sandaime reads the list of dead Uchihas. Kakashi doesn't say anything, there isn't enough air in his lungs for the words that will never be enough. He watches his sister up on stage, his sharingan recording every curve of her.

"...Uchiha Yokote, are found guilty and hereby have been executed as according to the law of Konoha page 30, section 3.80. On the count of the murder countless of active duty shinobi and the murder of Council Member Shimura Danzo, with the evidence provided, Hatake Fuuko have been found guilty and hereby sentenced to death."

His shoulder shakes, Kakashi is half propped up by Gai's strength. He grips Gai's wrist so tightly when Sandaime states the date of her execution. Where is the mercy of Konoha, the village of the good people, the ones that face the sun?

"Shimura Danzo was stealing dojutsus," his jaw is clenched so tight that Kakashi has difficulty speaking the words. "How, _why_ would they sentence my sister to death?" he asks again and again when they are finally alone in the apartment.

"Even if it was the right thing to do, it wasn't her place to kill Danzo."

It wasn't even her, the words die on his tongue. His hand twitches and Kakashi realises that he has to make a stand, _a choice_. Gai is still talking, his hand still resting on Kakashi's shoulder. Of all the Konoha shinobi's, Gai is one of the most steadfast and loyal. He wonders if Gai's loyalties have ever been tested. Kakashi blinks the sting in his eyes and slides his hitai-te over his red one.

"Kakashi, where are you going?"

Kakashi picks up a pack of soldier pills, another set of first aid kit, puts it on the blank seal scroll and moves back and forth until the seal scroll is full.

"Kakashi-" Gai places himself between the scroll and Kakashi. Kakashi brushes him away, seals the scroll and pats down the pack, slinging it on.

"If you go down this road, it won't be easy to turn back," Genma tells him. The senbon specialist watching him from the counters.

"They chose to sentence my sister to _death_ for an action she did not commit."

"If you give them a chance-" Gai says.

Kakashi spins around and looks straight into Gai's black eyes. He knows it's a choice that neither of them would be coming back to make again. "When I was six, my father made a choice to save his teammate in a mission that was doomed to fail. It was a choice between failing the mission and dying or failing the mission and living. He was ostracized by the village for choosing to live. My father, he killed himself from the guilt that the shinobi of Konoha and the civilians piled on him. They spat on him, they threw rocks at him, they threw garbage at our house. When I was thirteen, they called me a teammate killer, a friend killer."

Kakashi clenches his fist and forces him to take a breath. He shakes his head. "Gai, if it wasn't for imouto, you would have never been friends with me. Same for Genma, same for Itachi-kun. There is no one else besides imouto that is singularly more important. There is _nothing else_ more important than her."

Genma pushes himself off the counter, his senbon tilting upwards from his grin. "In that case, let us help you."

* * *

 **Notes:** Well, lots of bamf Uchihas here and me going on a rampage killing them off as fast as they pop up like a whack-a-mole. Oops? :) I like writing action scenes, but wooo one too many. I'm so thankful to have none for awhile after this.

I rewrote this chapter at least 6 times. I'm not completely satisfied with it, but oh well. Those who read the 'Words not spoken' will see a chapter bump on the various versions that was discarded. Those not aware, **'Words not spoken' is a companion piece to this story** with various pieces/au that never made to the final cut of the story.

 **Yup, this is the last chapter for this arc.**

 **Let me know what you think is going to happen in the next arc on your way out ;)**


	12. Dust and Shadow: Part 1

Sasuke is still missing, Nee-chan is missing, Shisui-niisan is missing, Itachi-niisan is missing, and even Ghost-nii is missing. Just a week ago, Naruto had four brothers and an awesome big sister. He didn't have parents but Nee-chan never let him feel it. She had been there for as long as he could remember, taught him how to read, taught him how to write, packed his lunches.

Sasuke came later, his constant companion, his best friend, and partner-in-crime. Sasuke is important, but if Naruto has to choose between Nee-chan and Sasuke, he would pick Nee-chan in a heartbeat.

Sasuke is still missing, Nee-chan is missing, Shisui-niisan is missing, Itachi-niisan is missing, Ghost-nii is missing and Naruto thinks it's all because he skipped class to prank.

"Naruto-kun, it's not your fault." Iruka pulls him aside on the ninth day of their disappearance to talk to him.

'That's what jiji and anbu-san says, logic says otherwise,' Naruto thinks. "I know," he replies. He knows that if he disagrees, it would just start a long lecture that he's not interested in. If he's a good boy, then maybe Nee-chan and all the others would come back, so Naruto doesn't skip class, he doesn't prank, he doesn't talk too loudly and he tries to do all his homework.

It has to count for something, right?

-/-/-/-

A man visits his apartment on the twelfth day of nee-chan's disappearance. He's tall with a head of dark, spiky hair and his hitai-te is oddly shiny. None of his elder brothers and sister has shiny hitai-te, they are scratched and worn, a mark of a shinobi that has seen action Sasuke and him agreed once.

"Hi Naruto, I'm Akito. I'm a friend of Fuuko-chan," the shinobi smiles, his small eyes crinkling into thin lines. He hands a bento wrapped in a dark blue cloth with white diamonds sewn on the corner of it.

Naruto takes the bento, staring at the white diamonds before looking back up at the shinobi that introduced him as Akito. He remembers nee-chan telling him about deception and how sometimes signals are the subtlest things, from the colour to positioning.

"Where is nee-chan?" he asks. This bento might look like it had nee-chan's clan sigil but it's not positioned correctly and not in the right position or size.

 _"This is a clan secret. You can't tell anyone, okay?" she tells him. "You're my little brother, so you are also one of us. But no one else, not even Sasuke."_

"Your sister sent me to fetch you. Shall we go and see her?"

There is something about Akito that sets his gut in a flare of worry. The shinobi is most certainly stronger than him. Naruto shuffles his feet, trying to recall all the lessons on deception that Nee-chan gave.

"Where is she?" Naruto asks again, dragging a clean shirt on and takes his time to brush his hair.

"Well, she is in the hospital…" Akito replies kindly, except the kindness in his tone sounds false and fake.

"And Kakashi-niisan?" Naruto keeps his eye on fumbling at the straps of his sandals. Why are his Anbu guards allowing Akito talk to him?

"He is with Fuuko-chan."

Naruto spikes his chakra up a little, just little that it might be passable for shock and spreads his chakra thinly to find familiar chakra signatures. "Is he okay?" he delivers his fake lines with an overdose of innocence and worry. Something isn't right and he can't tell what, but he's sure Yamanaka-san or Mikoto-oba would, the thought of Sasuke's mother sends ice plunging in his veins. Would she be mad at him?

He pushes the worries away, sliding his hand into the hand of a shinobi called Akito. 'Jiji would send Owl-san if it nee-chan was in trouble,' Naruto thinks and firms his decision.

"I can shunshin us to the hospital faster."

"But I want to get flowers for nee-chan!" Naruto drags Akito down the street and hopes that Ino-chan's dad would be at the shop today.

It's not Ino's dad that Naruto bumps into first.

"Shikamaru!" Naruto calls out, shakes Akito's hand off and bounds towards Shikamaru and his dad. "Nara-san." He bows deferentially to the tall Nara as nee-chan taught him, sliding his eyes towards Akito.

How cautious should he be? Naruto grips the edge of his shirt. "Have you done the twenty-two cranes yet?" he asks Shikamaru casually. Twenty-two cranes is a word they used for their ninja games. All ninjas have codes with secret meanings to them, Sasuke insisted. When Kiba and him kept getting the wrong code, Ino had gotten fed up and said, we use numbers and birds, okay? That would easier for you all to remember.

Shikamaru, the class' lazy genius, _would_ remember this code.

"Troublesome," the other eight-year-old yawns, accidentally elbowing his dad in the ribs. "Of course not. Weren't you supposed to come over to do it?"

"Eh, that's true. But Akito-san is bringing me to see nee-chan though."

Shikamaru's dad stiffens. "Is he?" he says in a tone too light and casual to be regular. Naruto has heard that tone when nee-chan heard Shisui-niisan had gone on a mission without her.

"Yup! We're going to get flowers for her."

"Ino-" Shikamaru starts and stumbles as his dad sweeps past him, pushing Naruto into him. His shadow grows on the ground, pooling around Akito, stopping Akito in mid-strike.

"Ojiru, Shinruku! Bring the boys back to the compound," he commands the two other dark haired with spiky ponytails shinobis.

Naruto watches the shadow climb up Akito, Akito's body shaking as he struggles to move his hand.

"You'll be fine," one of Shikamaru's older cousin tells him.

"Yea, don't be troublesome. Dad will take care of him."

-/-/-/-

"You're leaving," Tenzo says, stepping out of the shadow and falling beside him.

Kakashi did not bother a reply. Sure, Genma, Gai, and Raido were going to help but Tenzo had always been a strange presence that Kakashi isn't sure what to categorise as. He is, was Root just like Kakashi had been. Nothing good ever came out of Root despite Tenzo's peculiar loyalty to him.

"Take me with you."

He ignores the younger shinobi, staring into his Icha Icha like he is really reading it. He's not, but no one except his sister figured it out anyway. It wouldn't be a good idea to take Tenzo along. Not when they have to take Naruto too. With the rest of the village treating Naruto that way, there will be nothing good for the blond boy if they left him here. But taking him would only assure pursuit. Nothing says 'high priority retrieval' like kidnapping a jinchuriki does. Kakashi can almost hear Fuuko ranting about little children needing proper socialization. He always thought it was ironic that she so particular about Naruto and the little Uchiha having a proper childhood when they both had been out in the fields of death at the age of seven killing people twice the size of them. Life on the run for Naruto would be hard. Kakashi would have to see him every day and forced to see _Minato_ in the little hyper boy.

He sighs at this, trying to relieve the growing ache in his chest.

If Naruto stayed, the boy would have a shelter over his head, the boy would have education, he would have his friends. Kakashi bitterly wonders how many of Naruto's friends would stay his friend when Fuuko and him leave. Maybe the Uchihas, except the Uchihas would have their hands full. There is only four or five adult Uchihas left with twenty odd pre-academy children. Too many children and too little hands to go around. By association, Naruto would be further ostracized.

No, even if it means pursuit, it _is_ the right thing to do to take Naruto along.

"I don't get it why you wouldn't take me," Tenzo continues. He must have been ranting while Kakashi was mulling over choices.

"Were you saying something?"

Tenzo grits his teeth and says lowly. "Senpai... I know you're leaving. I can come too. I _want_ to come."

Kakashi double checks their surroundings for eavesdroppers with his sharingan, though he knows Tenzo isn't stupid still it doesn't hurt to check. "You want to leave Konoha to become a missing-nin... _with_ us?"

"Yes. I have no loyalty to Konoha, the only loyalty I have is to you, senpai. It was you who woke me up from Root, it was you who took me out. There is no one else that I would follow, but you."

"A missing-nin's life is hard, you realize that? And four people would be even harder."

" _Four?_ Who else are you taking?"

"Naruto."

Tenzo pursues his lips, scrunches his face and heaves a sigh. "You're taking the jinchuriki. They'll pursue you hard and furious."

"You know, there's that joke in Icha Icha Tactics when Takashi-"

"Be serious senpai. You can't do it with just Fuuko-san and you. Naruto isn't trained enough to take a watch yet. He won't run fast enough to evade all the hunter-nins, so you'll need to carry him half the time. That's just plain suicidal! What in kage's mind are you thinking?"

"We can't leave him here. We are probably the only ones that treat him well. Fuuko is the one that make sure he has food to eat, clothes to wear."

"They _will_ send hunter-nins after you. They won't stop because you're taking the jinchuriki. They aren't going to wipe it off as the Hatakes being Hatake. This isn't going to be the same as Fuuko-san taking care of Naruto." Tenzo takes a step forward. "I can help. Three of us is going to be easier than two."

"If you hit on my sister, it would be easier to kill you," Kakashi teases. He's seen the way Tenzo blushed around Fuuko. His sister is great, Tenzo has great taste but he's not going to let anyone touch her.

'Like she would even forgive you for trying to kill her,' the thought slithers across.

"That would be Genma. After all he had let Fuuko-san spend three nights in his apartment."

Kakashi lowers his book and stares his single grey eye at Tenzo. "Genma… what?"

-/-/-/-

"Fuuko-san," the tall Uchiha calls out as he steps in front of her cell.

"Kashira-san." Fuuko pulls herself up from the cold bench, leaning heavily on her thighs. "What can I do for you?"

"Sayami-sama sends her regards." Kashira observes her. His grey eyes, so dark that they almost appear black, tracks the guards. He tilts forward, a curtain of his long fringe falling on one side of his scarred face. "Sayami-sama _will_ get you out."

"Is it Sayami- _sama_ now? What about Mikoto-san?"

"Mikoto-san is indisposed at the moment," he says, seemingly uncaring whether the guards catch his next few sentences. "With the death of our sixty-third clan leader, Fugaku-sama and the nominated Heir Funechi-san, as well as the absence of other nominated heir, Itachi-sama; Sayami-sama, has for the time being, taken over the Uchiha proceedings until Itachi-sama has returned to contest." Kashira's lips twitches at her confused look. "The Uchiha clan is… was over four hundred strong. Moving on with the... loss of our clan leader is… a _thing_."

Fuuko can see his jaw clenching, the tiny spasms on his hands as Kashira sticks them into his kimono's sleeves, all the tiny things that she had learnt to pick up as an anbu. After they had seen the compound decimated, she doubted any of the living Uchihas would ever be alright for a long time. How Sasuke had even endured being the last of his clan in the manga astounded her. Eight year old boys don't lose everyone they loved and come out stable, especially not when their extended family had been large and close.

She drags herself up, the manacles clanking as she reaches in front of the Uchiha. "Kashira-"

His eyes swirl into a crimson red, catching the guards' eyes in a side-glance. Even with her chakra suppressed, she can feel the draping of chakra across the guards.

"It's a really light genjutsu," Kashira assures her. "Sayami-sama has been working to reverse your death sentence. However, even with the death of Danzo, it seems that other things have come to play."

"Other things?"

"Things that we are certain had not been a factor previously. Fuuko-san, even if the appeal of your death sentence is successful, Sayami-sama doesn't believe that it would be… safe to stay in Konoha."

"What?"

"What do you know about Uchiha Madara?"

"Like the founding father?" Fuuko asks. She has a sneaking suspicion of what he might be leading on with. 'Couldn't everything just be happy and okay for once?' she wonders bitterly. 'Or not. Since this is Narutoverse where everything just goes to hell.'

"I've been authorised by acting clan head, Uchiha Sayami to tell you the full story of Uchiha Madara."

She blinks. "The what?"

"Uchiha Madara was pressured into joining the Konoha alliance back during the Civil War years. In order to safeguard the Uchihas independence, Madara made a secret meeting room, fortifying the entire interior and exterior with what was called Dragon Stone. The meeting room can only be opened by those born bearing the Sharingan. However, Senju Tobirama sought a way to keep the Uchihas under control."

Slowly lifting a finger with each point, Kashira says, "First, he gave the Uchihas control over Konoha Military Police to hide his other methods. Second is that after assuring Uchiha Izuna, Madara's last living brother, that he would get treatment for his crippling injury, it was found that Izuna never did. And third."

Kashira paused, taking a breath and glances to the guards still under his genjutsu. "And third. Madara agreed to let Hashirama be the leader because he knew Hashirama would be fair. Hashirama was a great shinobi. But he was a terrible leader and in his stead, Tobirama picked up the pieces for him."

"Do you know about the seals on the Konoha's border?" he asks, sotto voce. "The seals, prohibit any Uchiha of blood leaving the borders."

"Wait, that can't be right. Shisui and I have gone to Iwa before."

"Yes, but you had a mission scroll. It's not a perfect seal, but it does a decent job in preventing Uchihas from escaping the country's borders. Upon finding out about this, Madara fought with Tobirama and later Hashirama. History says Hashirama was forced to kill him. But Madara isn't dead and we know this for a fact."

* * *

 **Notes:**

1) Well this is where canon goes out of the window, because come on… Moon plan!? That idea was just weird. Some parts will stay, like Akatsuki, Orochimaru… I won't say further because that'd just give the plot away.

2) I've answered some detailed reviews and dropped some easter bunnies here: luna-orlha. tumblr post/158761312563/bbhf-replies  
More fanart - Shisui & Fuuko in chp 4: luna-orlha. tumblr post/159105169935/commission-art-drawn-by-the-amazing-eeliiii FFn is being SO frustrating! They will be on my profile page if you're interested.

3) Also as a terrific reviewer noted about how odd Fuuko was, thank you for pointing it out. Cookie! I had my bets on 15 chapters before someone actually started asking it in the reviews, Badger thought it was 20 chapters, Getsu said never until I spelt it out. I won! If anyone got the hints as well, let me know! I have a bet to win still.

 _4) Also, Badger and Getsu have been rather busy to beta - i.e, grammar check my work. So, if anyone is interested, do pm me. :)_

 **Updates will be slower due to my work having entered peak season**


	13. Dust and Shadow: Part 2

"Rather than being simply the Niidaime, Tobirama was the unofficial Shodaime. After Hashirama fought with Madara, he had let the pieces go, let himself go. Tobirama never trusted the Uchihas despite the 'peace' Konoha had achieved. It wasn't apparent until a decade into Tobirama's official appointment. Even then, it was disguised as diplomacy. There are many criteria that Uchihas need to achieve in order to be promoted, a criterion that other Konoha shinobis do not have. And because of the official, unofficial decree of Tobirama, any shinobi that marries in or is prejudiced for the Uchihas is… disposed of."

" _Disposed_ of?" She frowns at those words.

"Not necessarily as a dead body, but rather that you are no longer under the protection of Konoha."

"And what has this have to do with Madara? Wait. Wait, Madara is _alive_?" Fuuko knew Madara was alive somewhere at the end of the Third Shinobi war but she had assumed that he died from old age after manipulating Obito into following his will. And with the story the Uchiha in front of her has offered, it had provided a questionable outlook on the history of Konoha and her knowledge based on the manga.

Fuuko might have remembered her time as someone before now, but now with each day passing, she felt less like the person before she became Fuuko. She remembered her _then_ self fighting with the Fuuko, the horror crying out inside her as Fuuko ran through shinobi after shinobi, bile curdling in her stomach. The second voice that seemed to accompany since she woke up in this world had gradually disappeared after her breakdown with Sasuke - like it had been absorbed by her. The original Fuuko would be more strong-willed than her, wouldn't she? If Fuuko was still here then why was she in control of the body?

Was it because _she_ knew the future?

Fuuko, the original Fuuko, loved her brother enough to die for him. What was to say that she wasn't a tool for the original Fuuko too? ( _You're not._ )

The echo inside her head doesn't reassure her, not anymore. Instead, it unsettles her. She is here because it allowed her to be. Is she Fuuko or the person she was previously?

No wait, she has to focus. Madara is alive, how do they know that? The story is different from the one she knows. Fuuko fights with herself for a moment. She's not sure if _she_ is the one that wants to or the thing inside her. Her jaw shudders from her internal turmoil, then she gives in.

"How?" she asks, stumbling over the other of countless of questions that the depths of herself demanded to know. She'll give a penny and nothing more.

"When we are born, our names are carved into the dragon stone with our blood. And it darkens in our death. Madara's name hasn't." Kashira purses his lips. His black eyes dropping to the ground. "In spite of his flaws, the generation that had Madara as their clan leader were loyal to him and chose not to speak up. The generation after Madara had begun to see Tobirama move against the Uchihas."

"So then… Why are you telling me this?" She glances to the guards on the side, surprised that they had not broken out of the genjutsu yet. ( _Don't be obtuse, that is Hawk and Chicken.)_

"They are on our side. They aren't actively trying to break it," he says.

'How and why would they help her?' she wonders. The last time it had been eight anbu arresting her and Mikoto attacking them to stop. Eight anbus that included Badger and Chicken. Badger who couldn't have bothered giving her a courtesy of explaining why she was being arrested.

"Sayami believes that in the event that your death sentence is reversed, your position would be at risk again. Whatever Madara has been doing outside Konoha, it points to him helping the clan, should the worst happen, Sayami will activate a failsafe to lead you to him." Kashira's lip twitches. His words are genuine despite his disagreement with it.

Was it a disagreement to the Madara statement or the failsafe, Fuuko couldn't tell. In spite of his difference of opinion, Kashira had still come to give the warning. That alone spoke volumes. She thought of the book that Shikaku gave her and chocolates that was smuggled in by Inoichi.

Fuuko would trust them with her life-

She shook her head, pushing the rise of _trust_ and _assurance_ back down. The other her would _trust_ them with her life; she, however, did not.

Taking the shaking her head as a refusal, Kashira reached out to her hand. "I might not agree with everything, but the Uchihas owe you a great debt. We will fulfil it."

-/-/-/-

Kakashi has been running around trying to get information on his sister's location. Even for an elite jounin like him, the secret has been sealed tight. They probably expected him to try something and they're not very far off. He _has_ been known to be overly protective of his last blood sibling. It's a weakness that has been exploited several times and a weakness he has no desire to fix.

"Anko," he eye smiles at the purple haired lady, sliding into the bench beside her.

Genma grins at him, his senbon lifting upwards with the tilt of his lips. "Kakashi," he greets, then discreetly places a privacy seal on the table. Anko only chugs the beer down, not acknowledging either of the men's actions. She's the last person for Kakashi to even consider being a fool, having been asked out for a beer by Genma, she _must_ have suspected something at least.

"Oh ho ho ho," she chuckles. Slamming the empty beer bottle onto the mahogany wood table. "So the whole merry band is finally here now. What can little old me do for you? A threesome maybe?" she wags her eyebrows salaciously.

"There is an icha icha violence scene that I'm sure you might be interested in," Kakashi chuckled and Genma palms his forehead. "But you know why we are here."

Her lips twitch in response, her tongue slowing gliding the edges of her lips. "Oh yes, I have an idea." Anko tilts forward, the action spilling her ample breasts over her arm. "Not threesomes for sure." Her fingers slides across Kakashi's, slipping a slip of paper into his gloved hand. "I'm _so_ very flexible, you know," she whispers into his ear, caressing the shell of his ear with her tongue.

Kakashi shivers, suddenly reminded of his on and off relationship with Anko. "Not today."

She pushes off Kakashi and sidles towards Genma. "Maybe Genma then?" Genma slings his arm around and guffaws loudly.

"Looks like she's still mine tonight, after all." He arcs an eyebrow at her. Kakashi only sighs.

Pocketing his hands, he stands with a grumble of wasted time and slouches out of the bar. It is six streets later that Kakashi finally takes the paper out, certain that he's not being watched. The code on the paper is surprisingly difficult. Nothing he can't handle though, after all, he's been decoding and encoding codes since he was six. The message reads.

 _8th base ment  
 **One** am.  
Seven guards._

If Kakashi is right - and he usually is, the gaps in the message denote the guards' location. This is awfully detailed information for a reluctant low level spy. Considering Fuuko's status and the classification of her sentence, Anko shouldn't have been able to get this much information. An ambush? Kakashi runs the possibly of an ambush- very high, but who are they trying to ambush, the possibly of simply capturing him - not so high, they could just jail him for a minor offence if that was what they wanted.

Then what?

There isn't anything else that he can think of that they would be after. How much can he trust Anko? Can trust be quantified? With a quick jutsu, he burns the paper, trusting his almost photogenic memory to remember the message. Somehow he wished that trust _could_ be quantified. Things would be easier if there was a scale of how much he could depend on others - or how much his sister still trusted him.

Kakashi makes his way to the rooftops.

"Ah, Kakashi-kun, how have you been?" Inoichi calls out, falling into pace beside him.

"Yamanaka-san," Kakashi greets. The blond seemed more tired than usual. Had he been trying to reverse Fuuko's death sentence too? He was Fuuko's genin teacher after all and Inoichi had played a large part of life even after getting promoted. Not to mention that Sayami had asked him to hold on breaking his sister out so that she could have a chance of being freed legitimately. Personally, Kakashi doubted she would succeed, but if the head of Yamanaka clan, head of Torture and Interrogation was helping Sayami, then perhaps they _might_ succeed. The question really went back to whether he could _trust_ them?

"None of that now." Inoichi chuckles. They lope off the roofs in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds were across the market district - the low rumble of the night shoppers and greeting flare of patrols. It takes Inoichi a few more roofs before he finally asks the thing weighing on his mind, "are you not going to give her a chance?"

Her? Who?

Kakashi could smell Inoichi's worry even through his mask's filter. His mind jumped at the loose strand, anticipating the possible upshots, firing off several possibilities, and then fixating on one: his sister. It's a little silly for his very brief panic attack. Who else could _she_ be?

"Who?" Kakashi deadpans.

"Fuuko has a good chance of being set free. She has done nothing wrong except being an active participant in an unauthorised mission. Wouldn't that outcome be better?"

He stops in mid-stride, sandals halting on the roof tiles. "Yet she was the only one of the four participants that were jailed."

Inoichi's shoulders sag at his words. "There are only six adult Uchihas left."

"There are only two Hatakes left," Kakashi parries back.

"Kakashi," Inoichi says gently, clasping Kakashi's shoulder with his hand "There's no need to walk down this road."

"They would have calculated that if they went ahead with this farce, they would have lost me, us. It's obvious as to how much the village values us."

"There are other factors."

"Factors. That include the death of the second last Hatake?" His grey eye catches the blue-green eyes of the shinobi. Why should I trust you, the question hangs between them.

Inoichi grips Kakashi's forearm. Believe, his eyes say. "Trust me," Inoichi tells him.

Kakashi by nature doesn't trust many, his sister, Tenzou, Gai, maybe Genma could be included. His sister, on the other hand, trusts plenty or did. He's unsurprised at the way her eyes are after The Mission. She wasn't old enough to remember how the village abandoned his father, and it was her friendship with Shisui that had sheltered her from how the village had treated him after Obito's death. An irony that the Uchihas had been nicer to him than the rest of the village. He can't _trust_ any of them, he wouldn't. Protect and defend them on missions, he would for it is his duty as a konoha-nin but trust, no. No matter how far he can throw any of the Konoha-nins. It would just be the sage's wish for hoping something that wouldn't come true. His sense of scepticism wars with the memories of good faith Inoichi had shown through the years.

But Inoichi was there when Minato-sensei died, the unforgiving voice hisses at the back of his mind.

Kakashi's expression hardens. "Tell me," he insists. The last time he did a leap of faith, it had been _Rin_ \- fucking Rin! He had trusted her and even though logically he knew that she had done what was correct for Konoha, his hand still cringes at the memory of Rin impaling herself on his hand.

Inoichi doesn't answer and Kakashi takes off, leaving the blond staring wearily after him.

-/-/-/-

The world is white and grey with black spots dancing across his vision when Shisui regains consciousness . Somehow he had survived when he thought it was his time. He turns and sees Genma sitting in the chair beside him. His right eye itches and burns and then he remembers. Shisui tries to push himself up only to find his limbs weak and not very responsive.

"Wha- haapen?" His tongue is a thick, flaccid thing in his mouth and recalcitrant.

"That depends on what you're asking," Genma wryly replies. He pushes Shisui down and pulls the blankets back up before handing him a glass of water. "You've been asleep for almost three weeks now," he tells Shisui.

The amount of time he's been asleep appals him. Three weeks. What happened after the fight with Danzo? What happened to the Uchihas? Are they still alive? _Is he the only one left?_

A part of him shudders at his darkening thoughts. Let him not be the last one left.

Genma shifts in his chair, chewing on his senbon. "I'm not sure what your last memories were," he starts and leans into the chair. "Fuuko was missing, as I told you. After you left, Akito, Raido and I began a search for her. None of us found her, but in the end, Fuuko appeared. Demanded to know where you were. She was in a state of panic, so I followed her when she wouldn't answer my questions. That was when we found you." He pauses then sighs and retells of how he got Shisui to the hospital.

Shisui remembers this. The white masked anbu, Danzo attacking him. Things weren't adding up and now that he thought of it, Danzo's actions had been very suspicious.

"Danzo!" Shisui gasps, shooting upright. He had to tell the Naras that Danzo had been working against them the whole time. A king in the shadows. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. He should have thought of that, thought to tell them about it. He rips the IV line out, taking a step towards the door before his legs giving out on him.

"Are you okay?" Genma hauls him up. His thumb applying pressure where the IV used to be.

"The Hokage needs to know about Danzo. The white anbu are under Danzo. We have to stop him before it's too late!" Shisui struggles against Genma's iron grip.

Have to stop the Uchihas, have to stop Operation Yamakaji. The words spin round and round his mind until a sharp, painful slap across his cheek pierces him from his spiralling thoughts.

"Are you back with me?" Genma asks. Shisui nods, nostrils flaring as he tries to get his breathing back under control. "Good." His teeth clacks against his senbon then he sinks down beside Shisui. "Listen, there's no easy way of saying this. So I'll be honest. Danzo is dead…" Genma inhales, his hand curls around Shisui's too-skinny wrist, holding it tightly.

"And so is most of your clan."

The world roars in Shisui's ears. His breathing coming in harsh, stuttering gasps. The room twisting in his vision. "You're lying." The words barely more than a whisper.

"I wish I was."

"I don't believe you!" Shisui attempts to shove Genma but he holds on fast.

"I'm sorry."

"That can't be true!"

"I'm sorry."

"They wouldn't..." His lip trembles.

Genma puts an arm around him; the weight of Genma's arm anchoring him down. "I'm sorry."

Shisui lifts a trembling hand to his face, trying and failing to stop the hot tears from flowing. His right eye itches even more now and instead of skin, his finger touches soggy bandages.

His family is dead because he has let himself go down. Shisui rips the bandage away to grab his wound, hoping the pain was some horrible genjutsu. All his fingers find is a ragged hole where his eye used to be and the right side of his face too light.

"My eye! What happened to my eye!?" He tries to run to the bathroom but his unused legs can't support his weight. Danzo took his eye, didn't he?

Genma catches him as he falls. "Easy there," he soothes the Uchiha.

What is an Uchiha without his eye? Shisui swallows the rising bile. His family is dead and all he can think of is _his eye?_

 _Pathetic._

 _Self-centered._

Tsubachi. Fuchiko. Munechi. Kissaki. Sayami. Fugaku. Mikoto. _Sasuke._

He heaves, feeling his abdomen clench for something - for air. Sasuke, his little pseudo brother with arms too small to properly swing the ceremonial Uchiha katana, pattering behind Itachi like a lost fawn.

"Is- Is- Sasuke…" Shisui chokes out, unable to complete his sentence. He's not sure if he wants to know or not.

"He is alive," Genma says. "Uchiha Sasuke is alive."

-/-/-/-

Instead of living alone in the apartment blocks, Naruto ends up staying with Shikamaru. It is a little more preferable to the cold empty room. It was never cold or empty, not until he lost everyone else.

Naruto counts Shikamaru's breaths at night. The trees rustle in the breeze outside, the sound of the creek not too far from the house bubbling across the rocks. He feels the invisible anbus watch him, his skin curls at their gaze. The anbus don't speak and Shikaku doesn't say anything about nee-chan, not explicitly at least.

He counts the breaths of his reluctant roommate, counts them until he falls asleep.

 _Twenty-seven._

 _Twenty-eight._

 _Twenty-nine._

 _Thirty._

Sleep doesn't come easily. There are no claws tapping on the hardwood floor, the warm heat that burrows into his blankets, resting their wet noses on his skin. There is no soft murmur of what a messy kid he is in the room next door, or the sounds of civilians' footsteps crunching on the roads beside his apartment block, the waft of laughter as they lurch through the streets drunk.

Shikaku and Yoshino treats him kindly, Shikamaru tolerates him. He is _troublesome_ but none of the Naras tries to pawn him off when the anbus come knocking. They tell him to treat it like his home, but they'll never be his family. Family is nee-chan and her haranguing him to finish his homework, family is Ghost-niisan sending his ninken for him to 'babysit', family is Shisui-niisan carting him off for ramen, family is Sasuke grudgingly sharing tomatoes with him.

Yamanaka-san comes on the sixth day. His long blond hair tied into a ponytail, his pupils are muted under the sea-green iris.

"You can call me Inoichi," he tells Naruto. "I am your nee-chan's sensei."

He doesn't tell Naruto anything useful. Where his nee-chan is, where his nii-sans are, the questions are all carefully diverted. Naruto has been around his nii-sans long enough to figure out topic changes to avoid answering questions.

"You still haven't answered my question," Naruto insists.

"Well…" Inoichi sighs and scratches his head. "Fuuko-chan really taught you well, didn't she?"

"Where is nee-chan? Where is Shisui-nii? Where is Itachi-nii? Where is Ghost-nii? _Where is Sasuke?_ " Naruto demands. Getting up, he pulls himself to his unimpressive one-meter height, staring intently into Inoichi's eyes.

"It's almost like a mini-Shisui… Did Shisui teach you that too?"

"Don't avoid my questions!"

"I can't tell you that."

"Why?" He tightens his fists until his knuckles are white. _Was it because he was a bad boy?_ Naruto desperately wants to ask this.

"You have to give him something," Shikaku tells Inoichi. The shadow user had entered while Naruto was attempting to pry answers from the blond. "He's not going to stop."

"Very well." Inoichi chuckles hollowly, his shoulders slumping. "I _can't_ tell you about Fuuko-chan because you have to be a shinobi, but I can tell you that Shisui-kun is in the hospital. And Sasuke…"

He shakes his head and the anger in Naruto goes out. What would he do if Sasuke died because of him? Naruto tamps down the shrill, piercing fear.

"Sasuke is sick. Very sick, so you can't visit him. Look." Inoichi gathers Naruto into his arms. "He'll get better and then you can start your pranks with him again."

"Will he?"

"He will." Inoichi holds out a familiar dark blue capsule, the pink glitter capsule Sasuke and him had been working on. "You left this in your apartment."

What if it he takes it and Shikamaru disappears this time? He can't risk Shikamaru, too, or his dad. He has to be a good boy now.

Naruto looks down at his feet. "I don't need it anymore."

Inoichi takes Naruto's hand and puts it into the palm of his hand, ruffling his hair as he stands. "It's not your fault. It never was your fault."

* * *

 **Notes:**

I'm afraid FFn doesn't show the different spacing for the note, nothing I can do about it. If you're interested, you can hop over to Archiveofourown and see how it's supposed to look like. But it's not terribly important.

Well I apologise this took longer than I expected. I'm awful at writing conversations. Long conversations with STOIC characters. Just kill me already. I couldn't write Kashira's conversation or Naruto's pov. It was so frustrating that I had many mini-breakdowns. Hopefully I can get back to the weekly update schedule.

Particular thanks to my betas Badger, the-anime-sage & ArtemisDay for putting up with me.


	14. Dust and Shadow: Part 3

It tugs at Kakashi like he missed something. He taps a half-gloved finger on the table, staring at the documents that Genma and Tenzo had brought him. The whole bullshit with Danzo was already well-documented by T&I, the whole Root cell had been dismantled, those that had been loyal to Danzo had been permanently sealed or executed and those that weren't had been merged back into the system. It all tied a neat and tiny bow.

Kakashi shuffles the paper again, his grey eye running down the neatly typed words.

"What are you thinking?" Tenzo asks.

Kakashi eyes him then flicks his eye back at the paper. "Date, twenty-seven December, YH62. 8,030 bodies were found and cremated by the Hunter-Nin unit. 3,500 Root shinobis were taken into custody and have been inducted into the Young Accelerated Course (YAC), 620 had to be put down… 3500. _3500._ " He hands the paper to Tenzo and retrieves another sheet with the list of names. "I don't know, but I feel like I'm missing something."

Tenzo hums, running an eye over the paper.

Was it too neat? Too convenient? But these are the official records, records that were given by the Head of Torture and Interrogation himself. Kakashi turns and looks at Mr Ukki flutter his tiny leaves. His hitai-te weighed heavily on his forehead. To distrust even T&I… to distrust Yamanaka Inoichi, would it be going too far? He sits forward, bracing his elbows on the table. Who did he trust more? Tenzo or Inoichi? Kakashi gave Tenzo a side-glance, mentally shaking a negative. Maybe it isn't about Tenzo or Inoichi, him or T&I, maybe it is about who wrote the report. He looks down at the report and gives a snort of derision. That precisely is the problem, isn't it?

"Tenzo. What do you think Root's reaction would have been in this scenario?"

Tenzo rubs the back of his neck, tilting his head upwards. He doesn't reply Kakashi immediately but that the kind of person Tenzo had always been - careful and cautious. He never said things half-heartedly and in spite of all the difficult things Kakashi made him do in the name of training, he never did anything less than his full effort. "That is difficult to say," Tenzo says finally. "There are varying degrees of loyalty and various shades of each degree. No Root is exactly alike, yet No Root is dissimilar. Where they draw the line, where their _seals_ draw their lines, they are all different and also the same." Pursing his lips, Tenzo cocks his head at Kakashi. "What are you thinking, senpai?"

Kakashi shuffles the papers into a stack, giving Tenzo a beatific eye crinkle. "I'm... thinking of chaos."

"Oh kage…" Tenzo's shoulders slumped at his reply. "I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"

"No more than building kennels for my ninken."

Tenzo groans loudly and cradles his head. "I _will_ regret this."

"You can always refuse."

"I can?" Tenzo sits up. His large black eyes staring at Kakashi expectantly.

"Yes… but Naruto does-"

"No, _no_! I'll do it!" He motions frantically at Kakashi. "Anything but Naruto's pranks! I couldn't get the glitter off for weeks. I even found glitter on my anbu outfit."

"I know, I'm sure Raido remembers too," Kakashi says smugly. He slides the papers into the brown envelope and hands it Tenzo. "Good, return these... And get caught."

-/-/-/-

Kakashi is a shadow, a whisper in the wind. He is the greatest shinobi that one could have on the team, and the greatest misfortune one could ever meet on the battlefield because he never fails a mission, never lets a teammate die and never fails to cut down whatever that stands in his way. He hasn't let a precious person go, _not since Obito and Rin,_ and he won't be starting one soon.

The Anbu guards don't even register him as he walks across the ceiling. As an Anbu Captain and one of the leads in top-secret guard duty, Kakashi wants to reprimand them - that is his excuse for sneaking around after all; but as the person who is trying to sneak into the level ten records, this is good.

The door is double sealed against intruders, one that registers the chakra residual of anyone opening it and one that only lets permitted visitors in. Kakashi happens to be on the latter, however having his chakra imprint registered isn't something he actually wants. Flipping his headband up quickly, he drops down softly in front of the two guards and smiles.

"Hello Cow and Sheep, it's so good to see you," he says and with a weak sharingan genjutsu, he ensnares them in a looped time filled with false memories of the long and boring guard duty where literally no one had come by. He's done far too many such duties to not require the use of a completely false memory.

Kakashi tricks Cow into opening the first seal, sending a false imagery of him hearing something in the archives. Cow turns, tilting an ear to the doors.

"Do you hear that?" he asks Sheep.

Cow approaches the door and Kakashi weaves a more intricate auditory illusion, suppressing Cow's impulse to flare his chakra. Cow doesn't flare his chakra or even check for genjutsu. What he does is something that makes Kakashi wonder how Cow even passed his Anbu test or the compulsory Anbu training, then again, this is Kakashi infiltrating. Kakashi isn't Konoha's best assassin for nothing.

Cow presses his palm on the door, the seals lighting up then spiralling open.

"Nothing there…" Kakashi hears Cow say and doesn't catch the rest because Kakashi has slipped in, making his way to the academy records.

Too easy.

He hasn't been here since Minato-sensei died, not since he stopped being the gofer for the Hokage. The memory of Minato calling him out of the Anbu guard duty to make him run into the archives settles heavily in Kakashi's stomach. Minato-sensei hadn't wanted him in Anbu, neither had Fuuko. He had been a brat then. Kakashi remembers Minato's heartbroken voice when Kakashi insisted on joining Anbu.

" _Are you saying that I don't care for your happiness?"_

He shakes himself from the memory. He has a job to do. Thirty-five Root taken into custody. Thirty-five. The number replays on a loop as he navigates the dark aisles with a chakra light on his left hand. The rows of shelves rise into the darkness with thick sides and shelves instead of ladders like the civilian archives have. After all, no non-shinobi would enter the top-secret archives of Konoha.

Kakashi pads down rows, peering at the labels. The labels are still the same, just more variations for each category, 讲 - to speak, 诱 - to persuade, 谑 to jeer1.

All very deceptively orderly. Instead of being neatly labelled, the way the records are archived is encrypted. Root records would be under… Kakashi runs the encryption through his head, counting the strokes as he passes the signs. Debate, Slander… The complexity of the kanji increasing as he walks down the rows. Had this been any other level apart from the top-secret archives, Kakashi would have looked for the exact kanji as he remembered it to be. Nonetheless, unlike the other levels, level ten was far more intricate with triple layers of encryption.

He weaves through the shadowy library, passes rows and rows of scrolls and boxes.

The thing about Kakashi is that contrary to popular belief, he doesn't have undying loyalty to Konoha. Undying loyalty? He scoffs. Look where undying loyalty got his father, ashes drifting in the wind.

Kakashi stalks past several rows more and finally stops at a row. 怼 - Resentment. There's an irony that the Root intake into regular shinobi forces is filed under that character, perhaps not so much an irony. Twenty-six extra large boxes for thirty-five thousand shinobis and that's not normal at all.

At his present age of twenty-two, Kakashi might really hate paperwork, but the hours of spending down here filing Minato-sensei's reports had been drilled into him. An average active Anbu squad's annual reports amounts to three sealed scrolls, not even enough to merit a box. An extra large box's average capacity was one thousand scrolls. hree sealed scrolls, not even enough to merit a box. A large box's average capacity was fifty scrolls. It is a regular practice to add dud scrolls next to the real scrolls, but surely not _that_ many.

He peers into a box and swallows a large sigh. Could he seal all of them away?

Even with the sharingan...

His eye twitches at the idea of sitting here for hours going through each. Part of him wanted to 'nope' the hell out.

'Fuuko owes him _so_ much,' he bitterly thinks then spawns several clones, all sighing as they form teams of four for each box.

-/-/-/-

Shuffling through the scrolls at record speed, Kakashi uses his sharingan to copy and analyse the words he read. They are mostly boring reports mixed with the exasperation of the Root's transition handler with the lack of basic social etiquette.

His eye lingers on a line. Twenty-three squads with former Root members.

 _Twenty-three._

He hasn't exactly been a jounin sensei yet, but he's heard of Raido talk about it. Twenty-three squads slated for the jounin track isn't a something common. Chuunin track, yes, jounin track, no. A former _Root_ member on jounin track? That sounded shady as hell. It is true that jounins are generally more powerful, they had to be. Jounins were leaders, they didn't just bring firepower to the fight. They had to bring brain muscles.

No, wait. Kakashi backtracked on his thought process. It had only been twenty days since Danzo died, ten days since the former Root members were added into the academy. Wasn't it far too early to even talk about graduation? The idea was to instil loyalty and work against any of the brainwashing Danzo had done to them.

He remembers Tenzo, Tenzo just after leaving Root. It had taken Tenzo four years to work through all the brainwashing. There is no way any of these Root members - _former_ Root members, Kakashi corrects himself, would be able to get there in less than half of that.

Kakashi pops his clones, reabsorbing all the chakra. Even though he was prepared for it, the sudden influx of memories still hit him like a punch from Tsunade. Kakashi rubs his head then sits up. All the reports were signed off by Homura.

Mitokado Homura, Elder on the Council, head of Education. A rank, notable kills - Terumi Saiyako and Saizo Takamura, one of the Seven Swordsmen of Mist.

He taps his knee.

Mitokado Homura.

Kakashi repacks all the scrolls, restacking the boxes and shunshins down the rows to where he knows the academy reports are. He recognises the scrawls on the reports, Hayate's handwriting is bad as ever.

 _Tested 3962 applicants. 2150 passed preliminary Chuunin track tests. 236 squads passed Jounin's test._

He scrolls down the list of names, almost glazing over the intake list when he stops and stares. Kakashi knows realistically that half of the academy students ever make it in out of the academy. The plausible reason for dropping out is long and comprehensive, except _this?_ This is less than half.

There is something wrong with the records and Kakashi knows it in the bottom of his gut, churning. He might have come here for something to help Sayami create a leverage for his sister's freedom, but this - if he lets this go, he knows will regret it.

Kakashi looks up, judging the amount of time passed since he entered by the smell of fresh air. Two hours. Whatever commotion Tenzo might have done to take the heat off here would be almost over by now. He unfurls a blank seal scroll and piles the academy folders onto it. No time to check which to take and which not to, he simply takes as many as the seal can take, seal it and slips out.

-/-/-/-

It takes Shisui two more days before he finally makes it out of the hospital from his own sheer will. He knows the doctors and nurses have insisted another week. Any longer and he'll go mad, Shisui thinks. Genma doesn't tell him much about what happened, he doesn't need to. The things that Genma are tight-lipped to, is telling.

Genma falls beside him as Shisui hobbles back to the compound. "You should be in the hospital," Gemma says.

Shisui only grunts, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. _Left foot, right foot, left foot._ Trying not to think of how his response was a perfect imitation of a typical Uchiha. Sasuke is alive, he reminds himself.

 _Sasuke is alive._

He doesn't need to think of the countless of dead bodies that the anbu had to pick through, or how there were so many that Sayami ran out chakra to burn them in the bright blue flame that all traditional Uchiha funerals require. So many that Sayami fell into a state of deep chakra exhaustion. The roar of emotions wraps its steely fingers around his throat, the colours of his vision sharpening as he forces himself to school his breath.

 _Sasuke is alive._

If there's anything that went right, it's that his little adopted brother is alive. The thought doesn't assuage the guilt in him as much as he hoped it would. Father is dead, Mother is dead. Shisui feels Genma's hand grip his arm. "Your sharingan," he hisses.

Oh. So that was why the world seemed particularly clear. He hasn't made this mistake since seven. Shisui reaches up to clutch his eye, only to fumble on his bandages. Right, he lost his right eye. He takes a shuddering breath, dragging the chakra from his left eye. The red iris spins and spins then fades into its usual black. The world is muted again, back into the dull lines and dark shades of colours. Except his heart continues beating painfully and Shisui knows it won't stop.

"You're okay," Genma tells him. There's a hand on his shoulder that is not so much of pressing down on him but holding him up. Shisui wonders if he would even be able to walk to six kilometres back to the compound with the way his legs are trembling.

He has to get back to the compound, get back to Sasuke. He promised Itachi he would watch over Sasuke.

The sun is high in the sky by the time Shisui finally makes to the clan compound gates. He can feel the sweat drip down his face. His ribs and leg ache from his exertion.

Shisui can hear the senbon click against Genma's teeth as he waits for Shisui to catch his breath. "I'm fine," he grits out through clenched teeth.

"I didn't say anything," Genma replies in a cool voice.

"I could hear you thinking it."

The senbon clicks against his teeth again, his lips twitching into a smirk. "Actually… I was thinking that we made it just in time for lunch."

"Hn-" Choosing not to answer, Shisui pushes open the gates. The gates were closed, the gates are never closed. The guards that usually sit on the side are missing, leaving just empty cushion seats. He stares at the streets. The Uchiha streets always had people about, especially at noon.

 _Sasuke is alive._

The more he thinks about it, the less it seems likely. Genma said that _some_ had survived. _Some._ He wonders if it's all technicalities. Two could be _some_ and the _two_ could include him and Sasuke. He tries to shake the burning feeling in his chest. Genma wouldn't lie about such things, he tells himself.

The window of the bakery is shattered, large shards hang perilously from a swinging tip. Uchiha Ikasaki used to bake the best buns in the compound. The door to the smithery had been burnt to ashes, along with the store opposite it. Uchiha Takara had retired after the third war and went into making flying weapons, they were very good so he had bought Genma several sets from that shop.

His footsteps echoed loudly in the quiet, desolate streets. Just yesterday, he was running on the rooftops to avoid the traffic. Just yesterday, or so it to him in spite of Genma telling him that it had been one month. He averts his gaze from the blood stains that still paint the walls. Blood and gore are big parts of his life, just not blood and gore from the people he knew from childhood.

" _Shisui-kun! Here, bring some dango for Itachi-kun! Koichi-chan made a new flavour, I think Itachi-kun will love it."_

He tells himself that his legs are trembling from the exertion and not the grief in his heart even though he knows that it's not true. There are potholes on the once-carefully paved street, holes that Shisui can identify at a glance, holes that rimmed with a colour are darker than the sandy earth it is paved with. He closes his one remaining eye, his fists clenching so tightly that he can feel the sticky blood between his nails.

" _Have you eaten, Shisui-san? Here, oyakodon on the house!"_

Genma's hand clenches his shoulder, the grip reminding Shisui that he isn't alone in this. "Genma?" his voice rasps in the heavy silence. He turns to catch Genma's steady gaze. "Where is Fuuko?"

"Ah…" Genma's voice sounded uncharacteristically tight. Like he had to strain to answer him, as though Shisui had struck a raw nerve.

Shisui stops in mid-step, standing completely still. The colour on his face bleeding out as he takes in Genma's reaction. "Is she… _dead?_ " Kage, please let her not be dead.

"What? _No_!"

"But you haven't mentioned her at all… and she hasn't come around either." He knows that Fuuko would stop by at least once, no matter how busy she is.

"She's not dead," Genma insists.

"You haven't answered the question. Where is Fuuko?"

"I _am_ answering the question, Fuuko is not dead."

" _Yet,_ " Shisui tacks on flatly.

"... _Yet,_ " Genma agrees with a sigh.

-/-/-/-

Kakashi stares at the door, wondering if he should knock. Could he trust Shikaku? He _had_ to, there is no one else, he reasons with himself, raising his gloved hand.

"Kakashi?" Shikaku quirks an eyebrow and yawns. "What are you doing here at five in the morning?"

The scroll feels like it's burning a hole in his pocket. He is not wrong, there is something going in the academy, Kakashi tells himself. "Nara-san, I think you might want to see this." He holds up the scroll and allows Shikaku to usher him to his home office.

Shikaku doesn't say anything as he peruses through the books and Kakashi doesn't offer anything. Outside, across the Nara forest, Kakashi could see the twilight breaking. He had experienced far longer nights but the weight of the missing children pressed down heavily on his shoulders.

"These scrolls…" Shikaku presses his nose tiredly, his hand clasped together as he searches for the words that even Kakashi has difficulty thinking. Kakashi wants to rage, wants to deny the possibility of the scrolls being falsified.

"I took them from the level ten archives," Kakashi says simply. His eye still watching the streaks of orange cut across the dark blue sky. Under normal circumstances, Kakashi might have tried to hide the fact that he had broken one of the highest level rules and if Shikaku wanted, Kakashi could have been executed as a traitor without any trial.

The Hatakes don't mean anything to Konoha anyway, he finds himself thinking that.

Shikaku heaves a sigh. "Here I was, mildly hoping that you were here to see Naruto."

His head whips around to take in Shikaku's words. "Naruto? What is he doing here?"

"Akito- Kusari Akito attempted to kidnap Naruto and came really close to it, had Naruto bumped into Shikamaru and me."

"Kusari Akito?" That sounded familiar. Though Kakashi isn't certain that he has heard that name before. How had this Akito come close to get away with kidnapping Naruto? Tenzo had promised to watch over Naruto, unless Tenzo-

"You'd know him better as Badger, Anbu captain of your sister's squad."

" _What about traitors in your team?"_

 _Her shoulders hunched, her words prodding deeper into the clusterfuck that Kakashi refused to let his sister in, "do we even have a clan called Kusari?"_

Fuuko knew. She had guessed it right there and then and had been right. Kusari Akito was… "...Root." Had she known he was Root before the base? Part of him rejected the idea, part of him reasoned that it might have been the cause for Fuuko avoiding him after that.

Shikaku nods. "Peculiarly, he had all marks of a main branch Nara. Which would imply that either my sister had a child outside her marriage or that my younger brother had an affair and a child conceived from it. Except to make the timeline even plausible would imply that either of my siblings would have had Akito when they were six or nine, or my mother had a son that she didn't know about."

He taps the scrolls. "But if there are children going missing and with a reasonable stretch of the mind, it's possible that a main branch Nara might have been… _procured_ at an earlier time. Which begs the question as to why all Root found were non-bloodline. That said. I did some… _rooting_ about." Shikaku pulls open a drawer and unseals a seal hidden on the side of the drawer. The papers sprawl out of the folder as Shikaku throws it across the desk. The numbers don't really make sense to Kakashi until he sees the conclusion neatly written in at the bottom.

% Probability: 62.9382001

"Apparently, my mother had a stillborn during the war and the genetic tests have proven that Akito is my younger brother, Nara Shikato."

" _Maybe, perhaps. He calls himself Kusari Akito but he looks like a Nara."_

"But if he's Root..." Kakashi trails off, suddenly remembering of the question he had asked Tenzo a night ago. "What do you think Root's reaction would have been in this scenario?" He looks up from the papers, the words are sharp and acrid in his mouth. "They would go to the next in command."

"If losing over ten thousand of their force is an acceptable loss, I'd hate to see what isn't."

The idea of another in command threw Kakashi for a loop. He was forced into Root and while he hadn't been willing, the seal did not allow for opinions or deviances. If there was a second-in-command, should he not have seen it? Should he not have at least interacted with the second-in-command at least a few times?

Shikaku continues, not noticing the turmoil churning in Kakashi. "However this discrepancy of missing children does explain why they were willing to lose over ten thousand soldiers."

The cold closes on Kakashi like a vice. The realisation of the most probable explanation slamming through him. "Nara-san… what if Danzo was a puppet too?"

* * *

 **Notes:**

I'm world building here. I have the idea that the group we saw in Narutoverse was actually a very small glimpse of it. My headcanon goes that Konoha has a population of roughly 300k because has anyone properly looked at the city shots of Konoha? That's a lot of buildings. And frankly, the economy wouldn't work. I like writing (relatively) realistic worlds, so hey.. we're gonna do some dumping. I'm a little worried by the very silent response of last chapter. Do people hate this arc or something? *frets*

 **Let me know what your thoughts are and who is your favourite & most hated featured character so far :)**


	15. Dust and Shadow: Part 4

"Shisui-kun?"

A hand falls on Shisui's shoulder, jolting him out of the war in his head. He takes a slow breath, forcing his hand to steady and inks the brush again on the suzuri. Painting in his parents' names onto the dragon stone is so much harder than he ever imagined. They were chuunin. They survived the Second Shinobi War and the Third, only to die in a meaningless massacre. They were supposed to die in flames and blood; that is how all Uchihas go out.

Shisui breathes through his mouth, sending chakra through his limbs, forcing his trembling arm to stop shaking enough to paint in the engraved words. Painting in the darkened names on dragon stone with red ink will be the final act for the Uchiha registry. After this, his parents will be officially dead.

The brush sweeps dark red ink onto the kanji. Uchiha Hadashi, Uchiha Tansui. Underneath their names, he writes their last rank as elegantly as his hands would allow him. He attempts to set the brush on the holder, but his hands are jerking so much that they miss the holder. The brush rolls off the small foldable table and across the cold stone to stop at Izumi's foot. Izumi grips his shoulder briefly before reaching over to clear the ink tools.

He bows one last time.

And here the Uchihas lie, the ruins of the once glorious clan, consumed by their love and hatred.

His eye is hot when he stands and squares his shoulders.

Goodbye, Okaa-san, Otou-san.

The wall of dragon stone, once filled with pale names, is now lined with red ink. The wall should not have been red yet. There were four hundred and thirty Uchihas and now there are thirty-two.

Shisui steps out from under the temple. The sky is gray and dreary. Instead of a multitude of black-haired people, he can see blobs of blond, brown and even blue as the teams make their way around the compound, scrubbing the walls and tiles of any blood and fixing the broken windows and doors. There is a jounin slowly running through his hand seals in the middle of the street, coaching his genins on how to use a water jutsu. A tall blond gets it quickly, even if his water hose jutsu is tiny and falls flat really fast. The look of pride and excitement on the jounin and genins reminds Shisui of Haguchi teaching the twin terrors.

 _"_ _Snake, ram, monkey, pig." He folded the tiny hands of the five-year-olds into the correct position._

 _"_ _Haguchi-kun! Are you sure about teaching the terrors the fireball? We don't want our houses being burnt down in the middle of the night," Inabi snickered, elbowing Shisui._

 _"_ _I'm sure that's why we're all taught how to remove air from fires, or did you not learn that?" Shisui sniped back, returning the elbow into Inabi's stomach._

 _"_ _Make sure you aim at those two idiots on the roof, okay?" Haguchi told the five-year-olds who both nodded solemnly. "Now, tiger to finish and breathe in-"_

 _Shisui yelped, throwing himself to the side as the two fireballs sailed towards them._

 _"_ _That's my prodigious daughters! Now give tou-tou a high-five."_

Shisui forces himself to look away. There's still Sasuke to teach. Between Itachi and him, Sasuke will be very well looked after. He leaps onto the rooftops, forcing his swirling red eye back into its dormant black state.

Sasuke would be fretting for him now. Ever since Shisui had gotten back from the hospital, Sasuke had been clingy and afraid to let him out of sight. Shisui doesn't mind it. There are times when he wakes up in the middle of the night, thinking that it had been all a dream. Lying there, listening, only to realise that there was only silence where the sounds of night had once filled.

There is no more Uchiha night market, no off-duty Anbus passing over their roofs to sit down for late night supper before heading home, no quiet murmuring from the apartment next door or his upstairs neighbours having loud sex.

Shisui used to hate it. Now he would give anything for those noises back.

"-we can take rotating shifts… none of us needs to give up being on the active roster-"

He catches part of the conversation as he sidles down the pipe and through the window. Sayami is sitting at the study table clutching her head. With Itachi still out of Konoha until further notice, Sayami is the current acting clan leader. He doesn't envy her.

"What is going on?" he asks, crouching on the window ledge. Thankfully, none of the remaining adult Uchihas blame him for not stopping the massacre. These were the same few that had spoken loudly against the coup after all.

"There… needs to be an adult in the house at all times. Five year olds shouldn't be left alone," Kashira tells him.

"Mikoto-sama wanted to be the one, right?" He flicks his eyes across the room. Kashira and Sayami scrunch their faces at his words. "What is it, now?" he hisses angrily. It seems like every time he comes back to the compound, there is more drama. As sudden as it appeared, Shisui crushes the 'maybe it would have been better if they were all gone, after all' thought with a large stick.

They have gone through too much to have regrets now. And Fuuko…

He'll have to deal with that right after dealing with this. Shisui jumps into the chair, his sandals landing loudly on the wooden floor. Truthfully, he almost missed the chair. The whole single eye thing is still giving him issues, but he's not going to let anyone know.

"Mikoto-sama… _san,_ is going to return to the force," Kashira tells him. Apart from Mikoto, there really isn't anyone else better suited at the moment. Sayami has to deal with the politics and the reshuffling of the KMP, Kashira has to handle with the finances, Izumi would be filling much of the gaps as one of the last few Uchihas in KMP and they most certainly aren't going let an outsider look after the children.

"Did she say why?"

The two exchange looks, the same looks he has seen on Genma and Raidou. They are hiding something from him, all of them were. "What? What is it that you're not telling me?"

Sayami runs a hand down her face. "Has anyone told you about… Fuuko?" The edge in her tone makes the hair on Shisui's neck rise. Then without any preamble, Sayami continues. "In the Root base, Mikoto exercised her rights as spouse to the Uchiha head, as well as former heir and killed Danzo. However when they returned back to the compound, Danzo had sent his Root to kill the Uchihas. The children… are all that Fugaku-sama managed to protect. Someone else needed to take responsibility for Shimura Danzo's death. Apparently it isn't good for the village to find out that a respected council member had done such a thing. And since the Uchihas are too valuable in the council's eyes…"

She lifts her eyes to meet Shisui's, the heart in his chest clenching so tight that Shisui finds it difficult to breathe. "-So they picked Fuuko," Shisui finishes her sentence. "And Mikoto-sama… she wants to go back into the force to stop it? Can she do it in time? When- When… when's the _execution_?"

"Tomorrow."

His face goes still, suppressing his emotions behind his anbu training. "Do we have a plan? Or are we just going to let her die and be a sacrifice 'for the greater good'?"

Sayami reaches out to grip his hand. "Shisui-san, we know how you feel about her. We're not going to just let her die. We're going to send her to Madara-sama."

Shisui inhales too quickly, choking on his saliva. "Madara-sama? What in the kage's mind are you thinking? By the Yomi, Madara-sama is a fiction! He's _dead!_ Sending her to Madara-sama is as good as sending her to find a dragon! _They don't exist!_ " He wrenches his hand from her hand, chair scraping loudly on the floor as he paces the small kitchen.

"We have proof that he is still alive," Sayami tells him evenly.

"Yeah? Like what? The scrolls in his handwriting? His thumbprint? I could forge all of that."

"Haguchi has met him before."

He scoffs. "That's even better." Shisui shakes his head, choosing to hold his peace. "So then what? How are we going to get her out? What are the plans?"

Her shoulders sag at his words. "I'm not part of the planning. You'll… probably have to ask Kakashi-san. All of us are being watched. It's better for us to appear apathetic to her plight."

"Appearing apathetic." Shisui laughs, a single, mirthless sound, completely done with the conversation. He'll save Fuuko himself if he has to. He has already lost his parents, he'll be damned if he loses his girlfriend too - even if she doesn't remember them being together.

He jumps back onto the windowsill and pauses. "I'll do it," Shisui says loudly to no one in particular. "I'll stay at home to look after the kids." He shrugs, cutting off their protests. "There's no use trying to hide it. I can't fight with one eye at the moment. Whether I choose to stay here or not, I'll be on medical leave for at least four to six months."

Regardless of whether he chooses to stay or not, Shisui knows he'll be marked as unstable and be put up in the unaffiliated shinobi childcare centres for therapy anyway. If he's going to look after children, he might as well look after the clan's.

-/-/-/-

Inoichi is pouring tea when Kakashi slips into the Yamanaka head's personal greenhouse. As a show of respect, Kakashi has never snuck into clan houses. Since Shikaku had instructed him to not be seen however, stealth is the only way. He slips down the sides of an overgrown bush, his feet barely brushing against the numerous plants as he sidles up to the Yamanaka Head.

"Yamanaka-san," he greets. The subtle stiffening of Inoichi's shoulders tells Kakashi that he has startled the blond.

"Kakashi-kun."

Kakashi winces inwardly at the words. Even half a decade later, his sister's genin teacher still addresses him like he's a little boy. He watches Inoichi poke at the small charcoal stove before setting the pot on it again. Inoichi and his lithe, graceful movements could put many female shinobis to shame. He is an undercover expert, Kakashi reminds himself. Inoichi, who so deceptively poses as a nice, kind shinobi, is an A-rank undercover expert who has zero failures on his mission log.

Inoichi procures another cup just as Shikaku enters the greenhouse, ambling through the narrow path. There is a sheath of paper tucked under his armpit, _the_ sheath of paper that Kakashi can guess contains evidence of another big player. His sister's execution is tomorrow and he's busy doing _this._ Safe in a secured place, Kakashi gives in to his want and grips the tanto hidden on his thigh. Fuuko will be fine, he consoles himself. There's Genma and Anko, and Gai and… and…

"How is Fuuko's death sentence appeal coming along?"The words end up being sharper than Kakashi expected but he's not all that bothered, even when Inoichi flinches. They picked his sister over any other solution, the rage roars in him.

"It's coming along as well as it can be," Shikaku replies. "Given the situation we have found, it's not much wonder why the appeals had failed."

Inoichi reaches for the papers, sipping his cup of tea. As he reads, his face pales at where Kakashi knows Shikaku has marked out the number of missing graduates. His hands flip the papers, his eyes darting across the words, his lips thin and set with horror, surprise then regret.

"Is this…?" Inoichi starts. "Can we…" he tries again, then snaps his mouth shut.

 _"_ _What about traitors in your team?"_

The words haunt Kakashi. He has spent twenty-eight days agonizing over the Council's decision to use his sister as a scapegoat. Why? Why his sister? In the aspect of bloodline versus bloodline, the Hatakes were equally as powerful as the Uchihas, considering the ratio of prodigies had been ten out of ten for the Hatakes.

"Shikaku theorizes that it's because Danzo has a good reputation."

Kakashi looks up, surprised when Inoichi speaks. Apparently he had spoken this thoughts aloud. "If the village finds out that Danzo had a secret army, and that the amount of brainwashing these _children_ had undergone, the question of how reliability of the others in power and there would be chaos."

"Why not say that Danzo died from a heart attack? He's old enough to. Or any other reason. Why pick one of the last two Hatakes? Any other reason would have been fine."

They drink the tea in silence, the pot clattering as Inoichi refills the cups. He pokes the fire a little more and suddenly Kakashi swears loudly. "Of course," he mutters.

"What? What is it?" Inoichi asks.

"It's a well-known fact that Fuuko is Shisui's girlfriend. Fuuko had guessed that Root had infiltrated Anbu. She had known Kusari Akito was Root. That meant she is a danger to their plans. Then Fuuko attacked Danzo's base-"

"Troublesome," Shikaku grumbles, slouching deeper into his chair. "Whatever Fuuko found out, it's big, so they decided to have her executed in order to get rid of her. Whoever is this next big player, he's highly positioned."

Inoichi folds his hands on the table. "Well that proves that there _is_ another player about. What?" He asks defensively when Kakashi and Shikaku gives him a look. "Did need to consider that the Council might simply be utterly _inept_."

Inoichi _does_ have a point. Even without the whole Danzo thing, Koharu and Homura never did much to inspire faith in their capability.

"I suppose, considering Koharu and Homura's usual stances, we could consider them prime suspects as the next players," Shikaku says slowly.

"Do we have any theories on what their motives are? It seems stupid, sabotaging your own village." Inoichi taps the papers with his finger.

"I have seven," Shikaku admits. "But I think only one is likely."

"Only seven?" Inoichi lifts an eyebrow.

Shikaku sighs. "Troublesome. The other four are too unlikely to seem even probable."

The bantering between them makes Kakashi ache for Fuuko. He hasn't been much at home lately and when he's actually home, he's usually too exhausted to even haul himself into bed. Still, it doesn't stop himself from noticing the _not there_ presence of Fuuko. There is no smell of eggplant in the evenings, no miso bubbling on the stove in the mornings. There is no grousing of his choice of natto on his morning rice. Kakashi wakes up to an empty, dusty apartment.

"So?" Kakashi asks, interrupting their banter. He has to hurry. "What is the likely theory you have, Nara-san?"

"They did it for power, more power than a Hokage can offer. They weren't even interested in being a Hokage." Shikaku pauses, then decides to plough on with whatever ominous plan he comes up whenever he clasps his hands that way. "I think we should proceed with plan B, with some minor adjustments."

-/-/-/-

In the end, Shisui is unable to find Kakashi or anyone who could possibly know of the plans to free Fuuko. Kakashi wouldn't roll over simply because Hokage told him to. Kakashi would fight to free Fuuko, Shisui thinks. Whichever plan Kakashi would enact, Shisui would be right behind him.

He sits in the trees, in the private meeting grounds for only chuunin and up shinobis. He sees unfamiliar shinobis prepare a stage that could only be used for one thing. Cold, black dread churns in his stomach. What if things had gone wrong? He hasn't been able to find hide nor hair of anyone who could possibly know the plans - like they had gone dark, or worse, been captured.

Time ticks. Shisui casts his chakra sense out as far as he can. He's no chakra sensor but sitting in the approximate middle of the meeting grounds should bag him _something_. It doesn't.

There's no Genma, no Gai, no Akito or even Suzuki, Subaru and Toyota. Of those three brothers, he would have expected at least one of them to turn up. And the Uchihas, none of the Uchihas turn up. Had this been a straight-up execution, Shisui wouldn't be here too, but why isn't any of them here to stop the execution?

The Anbu guard encircle the small procession. He can see the shock of silver hair as Fuuko steps out into the sunset. Her face is paler than he ever remembers her having, dark circles outlining her eyes. Shisui shifts his eyes across the courtyard, his red sharingan spinning, taking in every movement of the small crown, desperately trying to guess the plan. He watches the Kurama step onto the stage. A death by jutsu - he hadn't seen that for a long time, not since the traitor during the Third Shinobi war.

Shisui waits and waits, waits for a signal, waits for a sign. He sees the Kurama cast hand signs, hand signs his sharingan deciphers and catalog. It's the first part of the death by jutsu - the endless sleep. It is followed by a second part where the endless sleep will be filled with nightmares.

He leaps, chakra propelling him through the air. His sharingan morphing from its three tomoe to a six star as he lands, casting an area wide genjutsu onto the crowd. He knocks the first guard with his sharingan even before he even turns. Shisui sweeps the second off his feet, stabbing fingers into pressure points and knocking the guard out. He's too late to stop the first part, but he's in time to stop the second.

How could Kakashi have let Fuuko be killed, killed as a traitor?

The idea that Kakashi abandoned Fuuko baffles Shisui. He's probably held up, Shisui thinks. The next two guards aren't so lucky and he's forced to gut one and stab the other in the shoulder to stop them. No one from the crowd has broken from the genjutsu and the Kurama just stands there, hands lying limply on his side. Not wasting time to figure why the Kurama didn't fight, Shisui picks Fuuko up and leaps for the trees.

He's not going to lose another precious person.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I just wanted to say that I've been sick since the beginning of the year and have been steadily getting worse. I'm sorry if my updates are a lot slower than what it used to be. I'm really trying to make it regular and weekly. I've been advised to take a break from stuff. Being the stubborn mule that I am, I refused to quit in the middle of an arc. Fortunately or unfortunately for you guys, the next chapter will be arc's finale.

I will be taking a 1 and 1/2 months break after the next chp. So if you guys have any questions about the plot or characters, do take the time to leave a message and/or hop to tumblr at Luna-Orlha and send me your question. I will answer as much as I can without spoiling the plot.


	16. Dust and Shadow: Part 5

Fuuko sees Shisui watching her from the tree, sees the red in his eyes and sees him watch her be carried forward onto the podium. She hasn't hoped to survive this. Her memory, though haphazard at times, reminds her that in the short history of Konoha, the village had been built on sacrifices of their people. She isn't one of the main cast, she doesn't have that so-called main protagonist shield.

She is going to die again. A part of her screams to run away, the older part of her is resigned to her fate. Dying the first time hadn't hurt. Drowning had, but it was far more like going to sleep.

She watches the Kurama clasp his hands together, each sign done slowly with precision. A heaviness overwhelms her.

At least it isn't painful at all, Fuuko thinks as she lets the darkness take her.

This time, it isn't like her first death. It is dark, not like the nights in Konoha, but like the nights in…

Blinking, she turns her head to the left and sees a stand of light slipping through the drawn curtains - light, unlike the ones in Konoha. She draws a rattling breath as though to steady herself. The pain she remembers having since a child isn't there. Her body doesn't ache. No, why would it? She isn't _waking_ up, she's dead.

Her legs still don't work so well when she tries to stand but she makes it far enough to heave herself onto the wheelchair. She's not at all bitter about it. Wheeling about in her wheelchair is strangely comforting. Who is she again? Fuuko? The shinobi that could jump off buildings, the body she inhabited for a mere year. Perhaps the real Fuuko had taken her body back. She guess she'll never know.

"Fumiko?" A male voice calls out, followed by the sound of a door shutting. "I was in the area and thought I would pop by."

"Nii-san." She wheels herself into the living area, looking at him with a fond twist on her lips. "We both know you're never _just '_ in the area _'._ "

He rubs the back of his neck, stacks the bags onto the counter. "Well if _Mother_ would give a damn about you, I wouldn't have to worry so much. You and I know that you're terrible at asking for help." He spits the words out with venom as he unpacks the groceries he brought.

"Nii-san… I'm twenty-five. I'm capable of taking care of myself. And you _need_ to stop buying groceries every time you come by." She smiles sardonically, drinking in the sight of him. "My pantry is overflowing already." It feels like eons since she last saw him. His dark brown hair is still standing upright like he never bothered combing. Their hair always did have a life of their own, which is why she always plaits her hair.

"Fine," he bites out, and sighs, putting away the rest of the groceries in silence. His phone rings and he straightens up. "Katashi Harada speaking."

She rolls into the kitchen and catches the sight of her reflection: a girl with dark grey eyes and plaited silver hair running down her chest, instead of her brown haired, green eyed version.

 _(You promised. You promised you'd protect Kakashi!)_

"Did I? I allowed them to take me with the promise that they would let Kakashi go. I already died for him! What more do you want?" She wheels angrily away from the mirror and the reflection moves to the distorted one on the fridge.

 _(Don't forget the promise you made in the lab.)_

The lab? What lab?

Suddenly, a cold chill ran down her spine, remembering the pasty white face and yellow eyes, remembering the last words the man said.

 _"And I asked myself, can a body exist without a soul?" His lips arched from ear to ear, his brush finishing the last portion of the seal._ _"And I said yes." His fingers pressed down onto the seal, lighting it up with chakra. The pain that had simmered to an aching throb flared up like fire beneath her skin. The searing heat was grinding her organs to death. Fuuko tried to breathe, her mouth opening and closing in an imitation of a goldfish. Her lungs burned, her throat burned. She was dying._

 _Someone save me._

 _Panic clawed up her throat as she felt herself fade into nothingness._

 _Anyone._

( _ **Y**_ o **u**. **I** **a** M _**d** eA **D**_ **a** l **r** **E** e _ **aD** y_, **w** _H **At** _ d **O** **Y** o _u **w**_ a _N **t**?_ )

I can't leave my brother alone.

 _( **i**_ **a** M D _**e**_ a **D**. _I_ cA **n' T H**e _ **L** p_ **y O** u _.)_

 _Please! I can't leave Kakashi-_ nii _alone._

She turns to stare at her brother, who is still pacing the length of the kitchen, talking rapidly to the phone, then back to her distorted reflection.

The hair and eye colour might be different, but the features are unmistakable. Katashi Harada is an exact replica of Kakashi and she, an exact replica of Fuuko. The reflection leans forward and places a hand where her hand is.

 _(We are)_ **h** _A **T** _**a** _k **E**_ F **U u**K _ **o.**_

"Kakashi?"

 _(Remember your promise.)_

-/-/-/-

Kakashi clips the pack onto his pants, hoisting himself out of the window even before the Nara courier can finish relaying his message. Plan F wasn't a plan he liked. He understands the need for fallbacks, but among all the plans, plan F had the highest amount of chance to it.

His sandals barely graze the tiles on the roof as he dashes across the village. Even without turning to look, Kakashi can feel Genma and Gai flanking him. Why had Shisui interrupted the execution? Had he not known about plan B?

Genma slides his fingers down his left shoulder and scratches his neck to indicate that he was splitting to act as bait. The patrol had picked up their high speed run across village even with the alarm bells tolling. Kakashi fights with himself, convincing himself that Genma can damn well handle himself. He can! Logically, Kakashi knows that, but at the same time, he wants to make sure that Genma succeeds.

Kakashi jumps off the roof, bouncing off the wall, quickly casting a genjutsu to throw over Gai and him as they duck into the shadow of the building. The shadows lengthen, tightening themselves around the two, hiding their presence from the pursuing Anbu. He watches as Genma attempts to stop the Anbu from going after his clones, diverting them down another road. It is another agonising minute before they move. The sun is setting below the horizon, the rays spraying out across the rooftops. Kakashi flickers briefly through a ray, letting another shadow hug him. Pulling his mask down, Kakashi sniffs the air, picking out Shisui's scent across the forest. He taps four fingers on the right side of his neck and Gai immediately splits to the right to intercept the four even before he can tug his mask back on.

The trees speed past him as he jumps from branch to branch, chasing his sister's scent. Will he get there in time? He curses Shisui. Had Shisui not taken Fuuko, Fuuko would be safe and sound by now. Izumi was supposed to inform him. Did he not get the message or did he ignore it? No, he knew Shisui. Shisui wouldn't have endangered Fuuko by ignoring it.

Approaching the fight, Kakashi sees Fuuko lying behind Shisui as he fends off the Anbus. Kakashi jumps on the first one, knocking him out, letting his Nara backup pick off the other. With only three guards left, the Anbu makes an attempt to escape, but the Nara do not let him, instead swiftly knocking the Anbu out with a twist of his shadow and dropping the body next to the others.

Kakashi turns to Shisui, anger bubbling just beneath his skin. "You fool!" he yells, slamming Shisui into the tree. "Did you really think I was going to let my imouto die? Of course not. Kaiko was in the whole plan, he was going to put Fuuko to sleep so we can fake her her death. You _stupid_ man. Now everyone knows she's still alive-" He stops, breathing heavily, then releases Shisui.

Shisui stumbles to the ground and runs a hand down his sweaty face. "Shit! I… I… I didn't know. Why didn't anyone tell me!? I could have- would have-" He shakes his head.

Kakashi doesn't like the implications of that. Izumi was supposed to tell Shisui the plan. That she didn't means Izumi is either dead or captured. Neither of which is good. He should have gotten a Nara to pass the message instead.

Guilt, doubt and anger stirs in him. All the time and effort placed into saving Fuuko with the least amount of repercussions, all washed down the drain now. He doesn't have time for this now. With the Anbu in pursuit, even with Inoichi's conflicting reports and Shikaku purposefully being uncontactable, he has only so much of a head start. Kakashi takes a deep breath and scoops Fuuko up.

"What's the plan now?" Shisui demands, watching him swing Fuuko across his back.

Yamato will have gotten the message that the plans have been moved up. He will grab Naruto and meet up at the safe house. Yes. No need to worry about him. More important things now, like calculating the speed he has to travel to outrun his pursuers. With his stamina, he only has enough energy to get Nanporo, which isn't far enough or even big enough for them to blend in...

Kakashi jumps onto the branch, making his way out of the village. Gai will be cleaning up all the trails.

"Kakashi-senpai?"

Kakashi schools his breathing. No point wasting time or energy on being angry now. "We move to Plan F," he says, unapologetically curt. "Bait and run."

"Affirmative," Shisui replies, instantly picking up that he is to act as bait. Kakashi chooses to ignore the tremble in Shisui's voice. Shisui increases his pace, taking point. "Do you have supplies?"

"Yes," is all he says, as they leap from branch to branch, with only his barely audible panting filling the thick silence between them.

His sister weighs heavily on his shoulders. Kakashi can see the tiny seals carved into the tree, seals that mark the Anbu patrol zone, seals that signify the end of the hundred kilometre zone around Konoha.

The shadow looping around him detaches from him and Kakashi stops, turning to face the Nara that steps into view. "We will be parting here, Hatake Kakashi," the Nara says formally.

Shinruku, Kakashi thinks his name is, an uncommonly brilliant combat-oriented Nara. He has, after all, kept up with the pace while hiding their scent the whole time.

"Thank you," Kakashi says, feeling like the words don't fully convey his gratitude.

Shinruku only lifts a hand in goodbye, melting into the shadows.

This is it, Kakashi realises. From here on out, Konoha won't be his home anymore. No more bickering with Genma, no more challenges with Gai, no more hiding from Anko. They had been short of time to stop the plan from falling apart. He hadn't gotten to say goodbye to any of his friends beyond a brief squeeze of their shoulders.

He looks at Shisui, who stands there silently, watching him with his sharingan spinning slowly. Any anger he has for Shisui dissipates as he watches him reaching forward to stroke Fuuko's cheek. He's not the only one who is saying goodbye, Kakashi thinks. He and his sister are leaving the village. They will be branded as missing-nins. Even though he hadn't known about Shisui's relationship with Fuuko until recently, Kakashi knows without a doubt that Shisui loves Fuuko. Probably since their chuunin exams, considering Shisui had followed Fuuko into Anbu.

Kakashi lets Shisui burn one last image of Fuuko into his mind, then clears his throat.

"This is it." He holds out a hand and Shisui grips his forearm.

"Go strong." Shisui's voice cracks. He doesn't ask where they are going and Kakashi doesn't tell him.

"Take care." It goes unsaid that he will look after his sister to his dying breath.

-/-/-/-

For three days, Kakashi runs. His sister is a dead weight on his shoulders. He has already taken three soldier pills and to take another would be fatal. At least he's almost a day ahead of their pursuers and almost at the checkpoint.

He can see the house rising in the distance, the slow climb of smoke into the blue sky. The dark haired man rises at his approach, his black eyes flickering to a bright red pattern.

"You're late," Itachi deadpans. "And you have pursuers."

He has already split off two clones to handle the pursuers before Kakashi can gasp air to reply.

"Yamato didn't make it," Kakashi tells him. "It's just us now."

* * *

 **End of Dust and Shadows**

* * *

Author's note:

This is it, guys. Dust and Shadows arc has finally ended. Which is pretty much the end of what I consider 'Book 1' for Bones Beneath her feet. 'Book 2' begin in October. My update schedule is on my tumblr at Luna-Orlha.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Toyota, Subaru and Suzuki brothers in the reviews (They were mentioned in the passing, but still!) and all the hints about Fuuko's real problem. Though not literal, this chapter should have given enough hints to Fuuko's identity.

Sorry guys if it's too subtle.

:( I like slipping in key points throughout my story. As well as the new big player has already been briefly mentioned and introduced. Ah hah! Who is it? Well, if you didn't catch it, then you'll just have to wait for it to be revealed.

For my new readers :) EVERYTHING is plotted out. Including my characters. Nothing is a coincidence. HINT: INCLUDING THE NAMES.


	17. The Fool and the Devil: Part 1

**Hello my lovely readers** and welcome back to another season of Bones beneath fer feet where the update schedule's made up, and the word count is a lie.

Thank you for waiting so patiently... if anyone is still out there... is someone still out there? I'm so sorry this was so late...

* * *

Fuuko drifts awake to a dark, misty sky. Her shoulders are shaking as she turns her head and she takes in the sight of Kakashi reclining on a tree stump turned into a makeshift chair. His mask dragged down with a lollipop stuck between his teeth makes him look remarkably like Katashi.

She palms her heart, letting a slow breath hiss through her teeth, feeling the erratic beating slow under her fingertips. She had expected to die. All memories of… this body… from _Fuuko_ , had indicated that an execution, was, well, an execution. Or had it been a dream?

 _(A dream? No. And how about we call me, inner Fuuko? Because that's what I am now.)_

Fuuko agrees. It's getting mildly disturbing differentiating the two of them. They are the same, yet different.

No, she had died, she corrects herself, just like _that_ mission. A feeling envelopes her, comforting her - like a hug and she pushes the ominous thoughts of her own mortality, pushing herself up from the sleeping roll that she is lying in.

"Nii-san?" she calls out. Her mind half thinking about Katashi, the brunet detective, and the other half thinking Kakashi, the silver-haired anbu.

"Imouto?" He sits up with a sigh of relief. "The plan didn't go quite as planned. I was worried."

"Plan?"

"Maa…" Kakashi scratched his temple, drawing her eyes to his hitai-te. There is a thick groove carved across the metal plate.

"Nii-san? Why is your hitai-te scratched out?"

"Maa…"

"Are you a _missing-nin_?" Fuuko asks in a strangled voice.

"Technically, you both are."

She whirls around to look the speaker and the speaker, _Itachi,_ blinks owlishly at her. Her eyes drifts up to his hitai-te, his hitai-te that doesn't have a groove in the middle like it did in canon after the Uchiha massacre.

Oh god, this is one great big joke. Wasn't Itachi supposed to be the missing-nin and Kakashi the loyal shinobi? Fuuko suppresses the urge to bury her head in her hands and turns back to her brother. "Explain. Now."

"They were going to kill you! What was I supposed to do? Watch you die?"

"Yes!"

"Well I won't. Not now. Not ever."

"Hypocrite," Fuuko says, immediately regretting but too late to retract. Shock and guilt flashes across Kakashi's face. However, instead of apologising, she unconsciously draws on the memories of inner Fuuko's academy years, repeating the shinobi rules back to him as he had done to her then and continues. "You are a loyal shinobi of Konoha. If my death is for the good of Konoha, then I would have gladly laid my life."

He rears back, his single grey eye blank. "I was. I am not."

His words churn disconcerting waves in her. Was it her? Had she changed everything? She asks herself questions that she doesn't know how to reply to and even if she does have the answers, Fuuko isn't certain she wants to know them. Inside her mind, inner Fuuko remains silent.

-/-/-/-

"I'm leaving," Shisui yells, slipping on his sandals and pulling an umbrella out from the umbrella holder. Small white flurries swirl across the garden. He tightens the scarf around his neck, channelling a minute flare of chakra to circulate heat, as he steps out into the cold January morning. Snapping the umbrella open, Shisui funnels chakra into his feet, letting him walk across the fresh snow without sinking.

He holds a hand out to catch one of them, unable to stop staring at the white flakes; it's been a long time since it snowed in Konoha - not since Fuuko and him were thirteen. His chest aches at the memory of them sparring in the snow. It's been two weeks since Fuuko and Kakashi left. He pushes the pang of longing down and pauses at the Uchiha gates. He had, unsurprisingly, been mostly spared the punishment for treason, for aiding and abetting a traitor. Save for executing him or discharging him from the ranks, the Hokage and his council had their hands tied and that was something he knew they wouldn't do. After all, they had used _Fuuko_ as a scapegoat in order to not kill any Uchihas.

The logic didn't make sense. Now that death and doom for him and his clan were no longer impending, Shisui had come to realise that many of their rules and laws didn't make much sense. Like the law on talking about the Jinchuuriki for starters. If no one knew who the Jinchuuriki was, then the rule would have worked well - except everyone did.

Shisui weaves through the streets, choosing to snow walk over the dirty sludge rather than rooftop route like most of his fellow ninjas, soaking in the hustle and bustle of the village.

He stops and stares up at the block of apartments. The crowd parts around him with disgruntled murmurs, but he doesn't care. Above, the shinobis leap from rooftop to rooftop, bouncing off walls, their sandals coated with a thin layer of chakra to adhere to surfaces as well as prevent footprints. Their chakra signatures brush past him like an acknowledging greeting. In the building, in _that_ apartment sealed with Anbu striped tape, there is nothing. None of Kakashi's lazy chakra or Fuuko's chakra lounging around on their off days.

What is it that the Uchihas' have that the Hatakes' don't? The sharingan? If the Hokage and the Council hadn't foolishly tried to use Fuuko…

He closes his eyes, forcing his feet to continue towards the hospital.

Was Konoha even worthy of his loyalty anymore?

He wrenches the traitorous thoughts down, nodding at the receptionist as he enters. Fuuko and Kakashi need him here, Sasuke needs him here, his family needs him here. Shisui takes a deep breath, preparing himself for yet another medical examination.

"Hi, Akiyama-san!" He calls out cheerfully then stops at the sight of the extra guests, quickly shutting the door behind him. His happy mask drops back into the cold, empty one he uses when no one is around.

"What are you two doing here?" Shisui asks Shikaku and Mikoto, narrowing his eyes at Akiyama who averts his eyes away. "I'm sure the doctor-patient privilege hasn't changed since the last time I came here-"

It's not Mikoto that replies, but Shikaku. "Izumi was found by a Nara patrol this morning."

 _So another of them has died._

"Izumi was supposed to inform you of the plans and relay instructions from me. But when she disappeared, finding her whereabouts became the top priority."

When Sayami and Kashira had not been forthcoming on any details, and with Mikoto having been absent, along with Genma and Gai being utterly mute as well, Shisui had managed to put two and two together after Kakashi's outburst.

"So you're the mastermind," Shisui says. They are too seasoned to react to his choice of words but the minute tension on Mikoto's jaws are indicative of her displeasure. "So you found her, what now?" He folds his arms and fights the urge to run away. Itachi would be unhappy to find out that something happened to Izumi and he didn't do anything to help, Shisui reasons with himself.

"She's dead," Mikoto replies. Her bottom lip trembles as though planning to add on but compelling herself to stop.

"By who?"

"We have our suspicions." Shikaku exchanges a look with Mikoto and flickers to Akiyama at the desk. Shisui immediately catches on and while he trusts his doctor, there are things still better left unsaid so as to not risk people finding out.

"Regardless," Mikoto says. Her motions are soothing and gentle, unlike the kunoichi demeanour Shisui has seen her use. "Akiyama-san has agreed to transplant her eye into yours. She's dead, Shisui-kun. Whether you take her eye or not, she's still going to be dead. You might as well take it."

The thought of Izumi's eye in his empty socket sickens him. Shisui can understand their point, but still.

"No." Shisui forces the bile back down. He's not going to put _Izumi's_ eye in his socket. What would Itachi say when he finds out that his girlfriend's eye is his eye now? How different is that from Danzo?

"Shisui-kun…"

"No. I will not," he grits out and sits down in front of Akiyama. "I have a _private_ medical examination now. Please leave."

"This is not over," Mikoto tells him as they leave.

Yes, it is, he thinks.

Akiyama wisely chooses to pretend that Shikaku and Mikoto were never here. However, he murmurs as he places a palm over Shisui's eyes. "They're not wrong, you know. She's already dead either way."

-/-/-/-

Fuuko leaps off the branch, following the two through the Fire Country. The last three days, the three of them had been travelling in mostly silence. Itachi has never been much of a speaker and Kakashi, Fuuko isn't sure how to deal with him, let alone talk to him. Letting her body flow in the rhythmic movement of landing and leaping, she finds her mind unbearably unoccupied.

I didn't mean to make him defect, she thinks, misery setting at the base of her neck. She was supposed to die, or not exist. Fuuko clenches her fist, digging her nails into the cloth covering her palms.

( _I existed before you did. Are you to say I shouldn't have existed?_ )

If canon didn't have Fuuko, then was this not canon? If this is canon, then what was she, what were _them_?

( _An abnormality. One that is out of the rules. We can change that_ thing _you saw,_ ) Inner Fuuko's words dripped with disgust and Fuuko didn't disagree. That world that Kishimoto had created isn't something she wants this world to become. Even if it meant that that so-called _peace_ that Naruto had obtained would never come to fruition. Not at the cost of Kakashi's psyche and certainly not at the cost of anyone else. Clearly, that came at the cost of Kakashi's loyalty to Konoha, she thought ruefully.

( _Kakashi is a loyal ninj_ a,) Inner Fuuko insists feebly.

Fuuko purses her lips, letting her attention shift back to lengthening shadows and the information returning from her chakra pings. The thoughts replay in her mind, spiralling into different things that she really wishes they hadn't. Kakashi's head turns and the memory of Kakashi turning his head as he drags her into the empty field surfaces. The white mask on his face when he draws his tanto. The dim light from the corridor illuminating the silver hair.

 _"_ _Nii-san! Stop!"_

Her breath hitches. Her feet fumble, almost sliding off the branch.

"Fuuko-san?" Itachi catches her by the elbow, his eyebrows creased in worry. "Are you alright, Fuuko-san?"

"Yes-" Her cheeks redden in embarrassment. "I'm fine." She was hardly going to admit to losing herself in thought and that memory…

"Maybe we should set up camp," Itachi suggests.

It's not late enough for them to set up camp and in spite of the lack of her attention, she still can push on. She's a missing-nin now and this is no longer a relaxing jaunt through the Fire Country before hitting enemy territory. Would she… would they ever find safety like they did in Konoha again? Fuuko forces herself to not look back to where Konoha is vaguely located.

( _What about Naru-chan?_ )

God, she hasn't even thought about Naruto since she woke up. She has to ask later, but right now, they have to push on. "No. We have to continue. This isn't home territory anymore," Fuuko says, somehow feeling like her words have accidental barbs. Sure enough, Kakashi flinches minutely and stares away from her.

Shit, damnit. Fuuko swallows a sigh. She didn't mean to say those things. Did she really expect Kakashi, her older brother, to let her die? Even without giving it much thought, Fuuko knows that she wouldn't have either. She would rather be a traitor or murderer with Katashi alive than none at all. Less could be said for Kakashi who had all the years of mental conditioning from being an assassin.

She swallows dryly, pushing off the branch with a spring of chakra. Still, he _defected_. There had to be better ways than for her, for them, to defect. The whole thing just makes her want to scream. She's not wrong for being angry at Kakashi. With one swoop, he had taken himself and her and made them into missing-nins. What about Naruto? What about Shisui? What about Sasuke? The promise of taking care of Sasuke would be invalid now. Unless she took Sasuke out of Konoha - should anything happen to the remaining Uchihas, there is no feasible way of taking care of Sasuke.

No, wasn't she going about this all wrong? Why would she even _care_ about Konoha or Kakashi or anyone? The terror of fighting on the battlefield claws at her chest and Fuuko blocks off the tirade that Inner Fuuko starts. They aren't _her_ people. Inner Fuuko died in that lab, too weak to even carry on. Had she not merged with Inner Fuuko, there would be no Fuuko at all. Fleeing from this fight that isn't even hers is her prerogative. These people are all fictional characters of a man! She died! She is supposed to find peace in death instead of being thrust into the body of another her from another dimension and stuck in some political intrigue that she doesn't give two fucks about.

And now she's a missing-nin! What is she going to do now? Hell! What is she going to feed herself on? Her thoughts shudder to a stop and Fuuko clenches her fist, realising the crucial question that she has yet to ask since waking up from her apparent execution.

She eyes Kakashi and then Itachi, who has fallen back next to her instead of the standard single file. "Do we know where we're going?" Fuuko asks, embarrassed that it had taken her this long to think about asking.

"There is an Uchiha safehouse thirty-six klicks from here," Itachi replies.

An Uchiha safehouse? Why an Uchiha safe house and what does that even mean?

"For now, it is a place to rest for you two," Itachi says, answering the unasked question. "There are maps and enough supplies for twenty people to survive for six months. And from there…" He trails off with a furrowed brow. "From the last missive that my father sent, I will be taking orders from Nara-sama from now on."

His forlorn expression twists something in her chest. Itachi… never did get to go to his father's funeral, did he?

Fuuko opens her mouth, perhaps to utter words of comfort but closes it. What good would meaningless palliatives be now? "What are Shikaku-sama's orders?"

"Escort taichou and Fuuko-san to a safe house." He doesn't elaborate on his orders and Fuuko doesn't think there are much more to his orders. If Kakashi and her are missing-nins now, then all the safehouses that they used to use are no longer safe.

She turns away, realising she hadn't given Kakashi a chance to explain. If Shikaku had been helping them, then there probably hadn't been a better way.

"Do… you know what happened?" She gives her brother a glance then averts her gaze when she catches his eye.

"Some," Itachi replies grudgingly and nods his head at Kakashi. "But taichou would be better answering you."

He would, she admits. But asking him would require her talking to him and Fuuko isn't sure she's ready to forgive herself for being the cause of his defection.

-/-/-/-

Beneath the cool shade of the Naka temple, Shisui stares at the rows and rows of red painted names on the dragonstone. Izumi's name still sits unpainted at the corner.

It's for Itachi to paint, he reminds himself. Itachi is her last loved one.

He channels a little compressed blow of fire chakra onto the incense and clasps it, giving the dragon stones a deep bow before sticking the incense on the urn. Itachi will be so depressed when he returns, Shisui thinks. He runs his fingers over his parents' names.

"Otou-san, Okaa-san. This is your son, Shisui. I'm… I'm..." His mouth trembles and he chokes back a sob. "I'm not doing well… but I'll be fine. One day. Soon. I _hope._ " He presses his bare forehead on the cold stone. "...They killed Danzo. He's dead. But apparently, it's not over yet. Izumi's dead... And _they_ don't want anyone to find out yet. I don't want her eye. I don't _need_ her eye. I'll end this stupid conflict and I'll do it with my own eye. And I'll make suffer them for our pain."

He pulls himself up and takes a deep breath. "I'll remind them why I'm called Shisui of the Body Flicker. Watch me, Otou-san, Okaa-san."

* * *

 **Interesting things to know:**

\- The Fool and the Devil refers to the tarot cards which is the central theme of this arc.  
\- This arc is slow because the last arc ended on a high note. PLEASE BEAR WITH ME!  
\- I wrote an interlude for chp 17 and my beta, crane, threw the remote control at me and said it was too angsty so it got replaced with chp 18 (which is now the chp 17)  
\- Also hey.. we're almost at the 1 yr anniversary of this fic (and I'm still not done with it! I'm so ashamed)  
\- Also you do know that this fic has a companion outtake fic called "Words not spoken" right? It's less of an outtake but more of a mish-mash of aus and things that didn't quite fit

This chapter was beta-ed by lovely denilmo.


	18. The Fool and the Devil : Part 2

Fuuko braces herself against the branch, her chakra echolocation had pinged a team west from them - west and now running in the direction on course to them.

'They must have a chakra sensor to veer course so unerringly towards us,' she muses.

( _Or one keen enough to detect her chakra sensing. Artificial chakra sensing always had its drawbacks on being an active jutsu as opposed to Shisui's natural chakra sensing_ ,) Inner Fuuko adds to her musing.

 _Patrol. Six Jounin-sized chakra signatures_. _Two high Jounin. One Elite Jounin. Three low Jounin. On-course towards us. Suspected chakra sensor. ETA three minutes. Orders?_ Her fingers flex into quick rapid signs, forgoing the usual anbu discrete code for the more commonly used rapid jounin hand signs.

Kakashi nods and replies. _Camouflage. Hide._

Is that even possible? The thought flickers through her mind before dissipating as the cold fingers of Inner Fuuko's control loops through her limbs, wrapping a henge around her. It is dark and spotted like the dappled sunlight on the tree branches. Her heart slows to barely beating, her lungs barely moving. It erases any possibility of being detected by anyone else besides an Uchiha, Hyuuga, or a Misukasu. It's even easy enough to hold through the thorough surveillance check like Kakashi ordered. Except, the team that lands on the nearby branches aren't a hunter-nin team or an anbu border patrol.

If the dark skin and light coloured hair aren't enough of a warning, the Kumo insignia gleaming on their leader's headband certainly is.

They're no longer loyal Konoha-nin - apart from Itachi, there is no need for them to confront the Kumo-nin running wild on Konoha's terrority. Inner rears in outrage at the sight of them but all Fuuko can think of is that she has no need to be here.

Loyalty is a vague word, she's not loyal to anyone or anything besides to the promise she had made when dead. There are six Kumo jounins and only three of them. Fuuko knows this would probably end as badly as the charge into Root's headquarters had gone, even without Inner's commentary.

She senses Kakashi shifting in the leaves, his three fingers reaching up to scratch his chin - a subtle anbu signal telling them to attack on his mark. She braces herself, feeling the icy prick on the back of her neck and the strange numbness flooding into her limbs as Inner Fuuko surges into control and she drops into the retrenches of her mind, pliant.

Itachi throws the first few kunai to a green haired female at the head of the squad, grabbing the squad's attention as Kakashi and her slide in the shadows.

"Uchiha-" one of them sneers, lip curling in disgust. His following words are cut off with a quick stab of the raikiri through the chest.

Inner pounces, unsheathing her kodachi in a swift motion.

 _Lightning Release: Iaido_

Her left hand runs through single-handed seals, channelling lightning into the metal as it lands on her blond-haired target's kunai. The blade cuts through the metal like softened butter, slicing into the Kumo-nin's shoulder. He howls and the kunai drops from his hand. His body bends sideways, dislodging her kodachi and hoof-kicking her in the stomach. Though she cushions the blow with chakra, it still has enough power to send her sliding backwards.

Fuuko can feel Inner's control over her body waver then snap as she - _they -_ slammed into a tree. She doesn't want to be in battle, she doesn't want to fight for her _life._ Still, she stands, slowly, stiffly, and very unlike Inner would have. Still, she stands. Why, she isn't sure.

Kakashi, on her left, drops the impaled Kumo-nin onto the ground, shaking blood off his arm. Itachi, on her right, stands at attention, looking completely unruffled despite the short burst of intense fighting.

There are five of the jounins left. The odds have increased in their favour, now if she could figure how to jumpstart the ingrained body memory while Inner is putting herself back together. She flicks the blood off the sword, sheathing into the saya strapped on the small of her back.

"Well well well, it's the Hatake brats! It's so nice to see you again!" the leader crows, pretending his teammate isn't bleeding heavily from the shoulder. Vaguely, Fuuko remembers his face from the bingo book. J? K?

"Ah, what's your name again?" Kakashi laconically replies, his shoulders slouching unless one is experienced to pick out the signs of tension. "K? M?"

"I think it was O," Itachi quips up in his serious, monotonous voice adding the spark that Kakashi had been trying to stir.

"It's G!" the leader roars, chakra swirling into his legs as he leaps towards Kakashi.

Instinctively, Fuuko leaps forward, using a kunai to deflect the oncoming shurikens.

She can do this. If she doesn't think too hard about how it works, she _should_ be able to do this. Fuuko remembers the very disastrous fight with Kisame and hopes it works.

Ducking his kick, she rushes into his guard, plunging her kunai in his thigh. She leaps, swinging her foot up to catch him in the head. She misses. The green haired kunoichi bull rushes her, knocking her to the ground. Fuuko obeys the insistent tug of instinct, stretching her fingers out as she lands, vaulting off the ground and springing off a tree. Bits of the bark spray from under her feet, her chakra control is still shoddy without Inner to guide her. She dodges the bleeding shinobi's thrust and parries the kyoketsu-shoge the kunoichi has brought out.

Her kodachi is unsheathed, flashing out through the shinobi's heart, swishing the blood off and sheathed again. A perfect Iaido strike.

She spins on a foot, facing the kunoichi and pauses. She just killed a person. A man who probably had family somewhere, a mother, a father, a sibling, a wife. Fuuko's mind wobbles. If what Inner said was true - that she agreed to assist Inner in her dying wishes, then what was her reward for doing it? For doing _this?_ What reward could possibly outstrip this gory murder and survive?

She sees the kunoichi swing the blade, her body frozen, caught in the burn of emotions. Then icy fingers peel her from the foreground, slamming her backwards as Inner surges back into control.

Unlike her, Inner's motions do not spare wasted movements, and she doesn't hesitate like Fuuko. Her left palm flying towards the kunoichi's neck, her right hand thrusts and twists her kodachi through the torso. She drops the kunoichi on the ground, spearing once more through the neck to assure her death then turns to Kakashi and Itachi.

She leaps into the fray beside Kakashi, blocking G's strike. Her fingers fly in a flash, side-stepping G's shurikens. Bird, snake, monkey, ram.

 _Lightning release: Raikyuu_

( _G is a far better fighter than his bingo book entry suggests. Or perhaps his bingo book doesn't count for the array of jutsu he unleashes because he's an infiltrator._ )

She flings herself to the ground as he releases water bullets. Behind her, she can hear Kakashi's raikiri, smells the stench of burnt meat. She turns, planning to jump backwards but freezes instead, her breath choked off mid-way. Kakashi jumps. His silver hair catching a sunspot, blooming in an argent glow, unsheathing the anbu tanto he had kept. Inner's control falters, leaving Fuuko back in charge.

 _He unsheathed his tanto, lunging towards her._

 _"_ _Stop!"_

 _Fuuko threw herself to the side, breaking the manacles apart with a swift movement. She sidestepped his lunge, then another. Threw herself to the left, away from the kunais that he had thrown. Failing to dodge Kakashi's ninjutsu, she flew across the field, before rolling to a stop. There she lay still, ribs expanding and contracting, trying to suck wind back into her lungs._

The collar of her vest catches against her neck, choking her. She soars into the air and slams into a tree. Itachi had managed to pull her away from Kakashi's ninjutsu. She had froze in mid-fight because of that memory.

"What in kage name were you thinking just standing there, staring at me!?" Kakashi whirls around after they finally put down the five jounins and knocked out the last one. His shoulders heaving from exertion as he glares at her.

"My fault? You almost killed me!"

"If you didn't freeze on the battlefield then maybe I wouldn't have!"

Fuuko opens her mouth to retort or say something she would probably regret again only to be cut off with Itachi stepping in-between them. "We still have the bodies to take care of and the last one to interrogate," Itachi reminds the both of them.

Kakashi tiredly runs a hand through his hair, catching the sunspot as he glances at the body again. Her lungs freeze at the sight of it, jaws clenching so tight that she thinks she might break her teeth. She can't seriously be afraid of Kakashi, could she?

Unwilling to think about it just yet, she shakes her head with a forced heave of breath. "Whatever. Never mind. Let's get it over and be done with it."

-/-/-/-

Shisui stirs the freshly cooked rice, spooning them into bowls as his clone sets out the side dishes and the meat stew. The quiet pattering of feet echoes in the hallway just as the door flings open and a dark blue body dashes into the dining room.

"First!" The girl hollers with a victory dance.

"Morohaaa-chaaan-" The boy just behind whines, rubbing his shin. "You cheated!"

She sticks a tongue out at him. "Nothing's fair as a shinobi, Komaru." She clambers onto a seat at the end, next to Shisui and pauses. The rest of the little children are drifting in, some still dirty from their roughhousing, and without prompting, Moroha slides off her chair, barking a "wash hands first!" while redirecting the smaller children to the step stool by the sink.

In the days after Shisui took over looking after the pre-academy children, Moroha had stepped up to be the children's mini-leader. Sasuke hadn't dealt well even after Shisui had returned, instead choosing to disappear until the second dinner where the adults had their meals. It would be hard for Sasuke to, Shisui admits. The majority of the children left behind are between five to three with Sasuke being eight and the oldest non-shinobi, he is mentally far ahead of them but not far enough to match the next oldest. Itachi would be the next oldest, at the age of thirteen followed by himself, eighteen.

Shisui scoops the bowls of miso soup, eyes straying to the forest surrounding the newly-refurbished Uchiha house. Suppressed anbu chakra signatures corner the perimeter, for their protection just in case someone tries to attack the Uchihas. But Danzo is dead, then who? Outsider? He stacks the soup onto the tray, quickly serving them out as the children settle into the motion of eating.

And it's not just Sasuke that's having issues adjusting.

Even the other children, even Moroha and Komaru, the two ringleaders have adapted as well as they could for five year olds. The dinner clatter is silent, filled with only Moroha and Komaru bickering with each other. Children their age shouldn't need to worry about filling silences or keeping up morale.

Shisui mentally sighs, dumping the empty rice pots into the sink and starts washing a fresh batch of rice. Maybe the Akimichi will have a _bigger_ rice cooker that can feed thirty people at a shot? He tacks the thought on his to-do list and lets himself drown in the mindless task of preparing the second dinner.

"Hira-chan, Kanmuri-kun, Unokubi-kun, it's your turn to do dishes," Moroha says. Already the children are helping to carry the stacks of empty plates and bowls to the sink while Komaru hustles the smaller kids to the bathroom.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shisui notices Sasuke, his dull gaze flickering back and forth from the little kids' backs to where Shisui is still preparing the second dinner. Sasuke takes an indecisive step towards him then turns away, towards the bathroom. No matter how mature the children are mentally, they will need someone older to watch over them.

Shisui heaves the rice pots into the cookers and sets the time, discreetly expanding his chakra range to monitor the children in the bathroom. After all, Sasuke won't take it kindly if he pops his head in to check on them. The kid wouldn't want to feel like his work is not good enough that an older Uchiha has to watch over _him,_ too. Not to mention

He can't fathom why anyone would think leaving young children to injured shinobis would be a good idea. Watching over young children is _supposed_ to remind injured shinobis why they fight. Even if these injured shinobis are usually only assistants, it still sounds like a recipe for disaster. He stabs the spoon angrily into the pot of stew.

"Shisui-san," Kashira calls out, sliding the door close behind him. "I have cleaned the dojo today, it is Mikoto-san's turn to wash the bathroom, I believe."

"Have you checked if the heating seals are turned off? I'm not sure if Moroha-chan or Komaru-kun remembered to when they left. Wouldn't want the dojo to be so overheated that they can't use it tomorrow." Shisui grins at the little five year old beside him who attempts to sink her face deeper into her collar.

"I remembered this time!" she retorts back, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and stacks the now dried dishes neatly on the side. "Good night, Kashira-ojisan, Shisui- _ojii_ san," Moroha sticks a tongue out and scampers off into the hallway before he can react.

"Bah! That brat just called me grandpa!" Shisui grouses, preparing the side dishes for the second dinner timing.

"Shisui-san," Kashira says and leans against the counter. His long fringe hangs limply on his face, hiding the puckered, burnt skin on the side of his face.

"I taught them the basic Uchiha chakra control lesson today. I think Nobaru? What's that four year old's name? Nanbaru? I think-"

"Shisui-san."

"-that he might not be cut out to be a-"

"Shisui-san," Kashira repeats, his finger tapping the edge of the counter.

"-shinobi. His coils are-"

"Shisui-san!" Kashira grabs him and the pumpkin that Shisui was plating drops from between his chopsticks and onto the floor. "Mikoto-san told me you refused the eye transplant."

"Ah… the pumpkin," Shisui mutters, kneeling to pick it with his fingers and wipe the sauce from the floor with a cleaning cloth. "It's very good pumpkin too..."

"Why did you refuse? We need you to be full-bodied and return to the forces as soon as you can."

"I'm able-bodied with one eye or with two, or none. Why does it matter if I take the transplant or not? This is _my_ body." Shisui stands, dusting his knees, and turns back to plating the side dishes. His voice blank like his face as he continues, "If I return to the force then what about the children? Who's going to look after them? You? Sayami? _Mikoto?_ "

He lets his words simmer in the silence and turns his attention to his chakra senses. By the chakra signature positioning, Sasuke would be helping the children with drying their hair now. After all, Sasuke had always been good at the Uchiha heating control technique. He picks up the sound of a door sliding open followed by the sounds of small feet padding further down the hallway and up the wooden stairs.

"No playing on the stairs." Shisui hears Sasuke chide the pre-academy children. "Come on, bedtime. Stop playing with the soap, Hira-kun." The bathroom door slides close. Hazarding a scowl from Sasuke, Shisui pops his head out, letting his sharingan memorise the image of Sasuke carrying a two year-old while pulling four year-old Hira down the hallway.

"It doesn't make sense for you to stay here and be the one that looks after the children," Kashira grudgingly says after Sasuke tows the four year-old up the stairs. "You're… the best among us. You should be out there, not stuck in the village because you need to re-learn how to fight with one eye."

"Well, it didn't make sense for them to use Fuu-chan as a scapegoat either."

-/-/-/-

 _Her head was pulled back, leaving her neck exposed. She saw their faces as they looked down at her. Curiosity, only curiosity and not a scant bit of hostility. She could take hostility. It was what she grew up with, knew it intimately. The man, Orochimaru, he raised a finger, forming a scalpel at the tip._

 _She knew what was coming, she knew what she signed up for. She had bargained her life to buy Shisui some time. Backup would come, Shisui would be saved._

 _She bit her scream off, feeling the hot liquid sear down her chest. She held back the pain and fear for a moment, maybe an hour. She thrashed against the restraints as the pain escalated but she did not make a sound._

 _"_ _My my, she's such a brave specimen," Orochimaru said after a while. His lips curved, hair growing shorter. His hair faded into a short spiky silver, the shadows growing over the bridge of his nose, morphing into Kakashi._

 _"_ _What a brave little girl you are," Kakashi crooned in his familiar baritone. "Brave, brave little girl."_

"Imouto?"

 _No, no, no._

 _"_ _Fight me!" His hand wrapped around her neck. "You will fight me!"_

 _She choked, fingers reaching up to loosen his grip._

"Imouto-"

 _"_ _Nii-san. It's okay," she replied, blood seeping from her mouth._

 _His angry face morphed again into a cool blank. Blank like the root anbu's. "Then die for me, imouto." He lifted the tanto-_

"Imouto! Wake up!"

Her eyes fly open, her body grappling the man by the neck, twisting and almost cracking it. Fuuko lifts her kunai, teeth baring at him. " _No, I will not let you kill me! I will not roll over and die for you!_ "

"Imouto! Hatake Fuuko!"

His chakra wraps around her, his hand catching the kunai, holding her down against her bedroll. Fuuko could feel the cool silky material against her arms, her face is pressed into the cold earth. The scent of Kakashi, of dirt and blood, of trees, washes over her. She gasps, body still trembling from the aftermath.

A dream. Just a fucking dream, she tells herself.

She lets her body droop and Kakashi's grip relaxes, though still holding her down. "Are you back with me?" he asks. The baritone that once comforted her now shoots fear into her.

She convulses at the punch of panic, fighting against Inner's instinctive urge to kill the thing that scared her. His grip tightens and she whimpers.

"You are north of Konoha, in an Uchiha safehouse. It is three am, twentieth February. You were having a nightmare. Everything is fine. You are safe," he says and repeats it several times.

"Shut up-" she manages to wheeze from beneath him.

"Are you with-"

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!"

He falls silent, his grip loosening fractionally with every minute that passes. Eventually, he steps back, giving her space to roll onto her back. Her shoulders shudder as her lungs heave for air.

She feels a surge of chakra from near her followed by a wet nose nosing her cheek. "Pakkun? Shiba?"

Ah, right. Kakashi summoning his dogs to give her comfort. How could she forget this classic move?

Shiba buried himself in between her right armpit, flopping his head on her shoulder. His tongue licking her cheek. Pakkun, being the jerk as he always has been, decides to lie across her face. The air whooshes out of her when Bull lays his head on her stomach.

"Great. I feel better already guys." Her voice is muffled by Urushi's fur. "I do need to breathe, you know." Fuuko pushes Pakkun up and blinks at Kakashi, running her hand through Guruko's fur.

"Thanks." She gives him a weak smile.

"Maa…" Kakashi trails off. He sinks back into the opposite bed and pulls out his well-worn novel.

"Where's Itachi?" she asks when her heartbeat slows and her body stops shaking. How is she going to keep travelling with him if the sight of his hair glowing and the sound of his voice is enough to send her reeling?

"He went back to Konoha. His mission ran on for a long enough time that they might send a rescue team out for him," Kakashi says, flipping a page and tossing her a ration bar. Forcing herself to not react adversely to his voice, she pretends to focus on the ration bar.

"Shikaku sent some orders for us when you were asleep. For now, we are going to lay low for a few days then we will be heading north into Kumo," he continues.

"Shikaku..Sent what?"

He scratches the back of his neck, staring intently at his book. "Well, we are only missing-nins in name. In truth, we are actually hunting for saboteurs outside of Konoha."

Fuuko smothers an ironic laugh. So they took Itachi's place instead! "Okay but why Kumo?"

He leans forward, book tucked away in his pouch. "While you were in jail, I found evidence that children from the academy were being abducted." Kakashi purses his lips, frowning at her lack of reaction. "You _knew_."

She hesitates. Oh what the hell, if they weren't actually defectors she might as well go all in, Fuuko thinks. "Yes, I did." She nods slowly.

"You _knew_ that they were executing you for something you found out."

She nods again. "I considered it a possibility. Or rather a backup plan that Danzo might have put in place. To be fair, some of the things only started making sense after the Uchiha spoke to me in jail."

"The Uchiha spoke to you. In Jail," Kakashi deadpans.

Fuuko averts her eyes to the ceiling. "How much do you know?"

"Why don't you start from the beginning?"

Fuuko cards her fingers through Guruko's fur. "I'm not really sure where the beginning is. But I'll try," she finally says, sitting up on the bed to look Kakashi in the eye. "It appears that ever since the… lab accident, my chakra sensing has been sharper and more precise." Not quite the truth but close enough that it would suffice. She isn't going to tell him Fuuko actually died. No, that sounded like all sorts of crazy.

She grips her chest at the thought of it, closing her eyes to school her breath. "Mongoose died. Badger was the new captain. With my new senses… I managed to detect the seal on the back of his tongue. The same chakra imprint as Danzo."

Her eyes flicker open, catching his. "The same imprint that was on the back of your tongue too," she whispers.

His hand jerks, tightening on his knee. "Imouto, I-"

"Concerned about infiltrators in the anbu, I went to the Anbu commander to report Badger," Fuuko interrupts, refusing to listen to his reasons. She doesn't care anymore why Kakashi became Root. "Except, Horse… is Root, too."

"... _What?_ "

"Yes. The Anbu Commander is Root and so is his second in charge. And the subordinates after that."

"Holy sage's balls," Kakashi breathes.

"Then there's the Uchiha and niidaime…"

"There's _more?"_

Fuuko nods. "You did tell me to start from the beginning…"

" _Kami,_ " he whimpers.

-/-/-/-

It's night. Without even opening his eyes, Shisui can hear the Hashirama trees swaying in the breeze outside the house, the Anbu patrols doing a slow circular rotation around the house. He hears the snow slide off the branches, the quiet scratch of Kashira's pen in the room next door, the breathing of the children in the rooms down the hallway. He schools a breath, releasing slowly as he retracts the chakra from his ears.

It's obsessive, his Yamanaka therapist would tell him. Keeping track of people by tagging them like that. Inosha would shake his head as he always does, but Inosha wouldn't understand it. He hasn't suddenly come home to an almost decimated clan compound, he hasn't suddenly woken up one day and lost everyone that he loved.

Shisui pulls the blanket up further, turning on his side as Sasuke's chakra signature stops outside his room.

"Shisui-nii?" Sasuke calls.

Shisui doesn't answer. He doesn't want to encourage Sasuke to sleep with him. If he does, Shisui thinks he wouldn't be able to sleep without Sasuke's warmth driving his nightmares away again. It's bad for a shinobi to be so dependent on another person.

The door opens and close and ee breathes in slow and deep, mimicking a deep sleep. He hears Sasuke shuffle towards him, climbing slowly under his blanket. Sasuke leans his head against his shoulder blades, his small hand tightening on his shirt. Shisui stills the hand that wants to wrap Sasuke in his arms and take comfort in him. He is Shisui of the Body Flicker, Shisui of thousand blades, Uchiha Shisui, threat level A rank; he don't need an anchor, he _can't_ have an anchor.

He feels Sasuke's hand tremble against his back. But Sasuke needs him, he thinks. It's Sasuke he's helping, not him feeding on his dependency, he tells himself. Stifling a sigh of relief, Shisui turns around and wraps his arms around Sasuke.

"Sneaking into my bed again? You little monster." He ruffles Sasuke's hair then tucks the blanket around them.

"When's aniki coming back?"

Shisui runs his hand through Sasuke's hair. "When his mission is done, I suppose," he says.

"I miss him."

"Well, I miss him too." Shisui pats Sasuke on the side, trying to lull him to sleep.

"Shisui-nii?" Sasuke says sleepily.

"Mmm?"

"Can you help me with my chakra?" He blinks at Shisui, trying vainly to keep awake.

"What's wrong with your chakra?" Shisui frowns. Sayami had told him that the seal was under control and Sasuke shouldn't have issues. Is there something that none of them picked up on?

"Well... " Sasuke yawns, snuggling further into Shisui's arms. "Ever since I woke up in the hospital. My chakra's control has been weird."

"Is your chakra flowing around the seal or…?"

Sasuke's eyes now closed, he yawns even wider this time and murmurs as he drifts off, "what seal?"

Apparently, no one has explained to Sasuke about the seal on the base of his spine. Shisui bites back an angry snarl and resists palming his face.

 _How stupid is everyone?_ He wonders. ' _If you want things done, you gotta do it yourself.'_

Lifting the blanket up a little, he stealthily pulls up Sasuke's shirt, scanning the seal with his sharingan. The seal does look fine, but if Sasuke is having control issues…

Maybe he can call in a favour from Genma. The ass owes him at least three after all.

* * *

 **Author Notes:**

Happy New Year people! Well, I'm trying to put out updates as quickly as I can. Unfortunately I'm a perfectionist... So I get stuck on choices of words and stuff. Which well translates to me writing slow. So here, have a longer chp!

 **Question:** Out of all the characters in Narutoverse, which POV would you like to see?

* * *

 **Fun fact:** My grandma's house has a rice cooker that feeds probably 50 people. And it's as tall as my seven year old nephew. I don't prep the rice so I don't know how much rice is put into that rice cooker, but I can tell you that grocery shopping involves buying 3 bags of 10kg rice - for 5 days.

 **Fun fact 2:** For those unfamiliar with the way of the japanese sword, Iaido is the art of drawing the sword from the scabbard (saya), striking the opponent, removing the blood and then sheathing the sword. It's one of the harder (hardest?) move in kenjutsu. Fuuko didn't quite complete it to classify it as Iaido, but if she had completed it, her opponent's arm would be sliced off before he could react.

* * *

 **Beta-ed by denilmo**


	19. The Fool and the Devil : Part 3

Kakashi runs a whetstone over his old kunai, carefully repacks his pouches.

"Here, I found some more kunai and shurikens," Fuuko says, heaving two large boxes onto the table beside him. Unlike his darkened silver alloy used in his kunai, the ones in the boxes are different.

"These aren't standard issue." Kakashi flips it in the air, twirling in on a finger. The balance is just slightly different, though not significant to pose a problem. Holding the kunai up to the light, he can see the tiny engraved fuinjutsu running down the handle. Only Uchihas would carve fuinjutsu into their weapons, he snorts mentally. With the script on the outer rostral for never blunting and the script on the bottom caudal for strengthening, this would mean that each kunai would last longer than an average standard kunai, and such fine carving. Perhaps only with a sharingan? After all, it isn't like they could have made a mold for fuinjutsu. For the fuinjutsu to work, the precise amount of chakra must be channelled into the script while it's being written.

Now that he thinks about it, it _does_ make sense for Uchihas to do that. After all, a large percentage of them specialises in bukijutsu. Kakashi pauses in his train of thought and mentally corrects it. A large percentage of them _used_ _to_ specialise in bukijutsu.

He sets the kunais into neat stacks for packing, inspecting each individually for flaws. Fuuko, in the corner, is inspecting the other boxes that Itachi had motioned to when they arrived.

Did he really think that things would just settle back into the way things used to be when she woke? He remembers the fear and panic punching through him when she said that she knew that he was Root. She had gone to the Anbu commander, except the Anbu _commander_ and all the higher ups in Anbu were Root. Kakashi wonders if she had really been intent on turning him in.

Pulling out his weapons pouches, he dumps his old weapons out, waving away the light dust rising from it.

Fuuko wouldn't have. Maybe she thought he was in trouble, or maybe she was just reporting on Badger. No. His fingers pause in their motions, his eye fixing on his sister still crouching by the boxes. The Fuuko he knew before that mission wouldn't have. As much as he wants, Kakashi knows it would not be good for either of them to ignore all the inconsistencies piling up against her.

She never did comment on him not summoning Bakushou and Fuuko always did when he summoned his own pack but not Bakushou, her version of Pakkun. Shisui said she didn't remember their relationship and Kakashi had seen up close on her interactions with Genma and Shisui.

Then there were the words she screamed as she woke from her nightmare earlier.

" _No, I will not let you kill me! I will not roll over and die for you!_ "

What had those words mean? What language was that? She sounded more used to it than the language they speak. The thought sounded ridiculous.

He runs a thumb across the kunai's flat edge.

Ridiculous though with merit. But Fuuko… she is irrefutably Fuuko. She has the skills she had honed all through those years… _sometimes._ Her own ninken pack recognizes her as their leader. No infiltrator would be able to summon Fuuko's pack.

Kakashi watches Fuuko riffle through the box, pulling out nondescript armor to replace her distinct Konohan ones. He watches the grin bloom on her face as she finds the perfect fit then turns to look at him, only for the smile to fade and the smell of acrid stench of fear drift from her. Turning back to his pouches, he packs three and seals two of them away in the seal on the bandage and wraps it back around his thigh.

Is she afraid of him? Afraid of them being traitors or is there something else?

Kakashi remembers the recounts from Yamato about his days in Orochimaru's labs. Yamato had confessed once that neither Yamato nor Tenzo is his real name. Somewhere during his ordeal, he had forgotten his real name and became subject fifty-eight. That might explain her missing memories, but the new language?

He picks up his standard kunai, briskly wiping them clean and setting them aside.

Going into Kumo would be difficult. They would probably need to infiltrate and there's no knowing how long it'll be until they are able to restock. But the new language… could it be a linguistic scramble? There was something mentioned about trauma and linguistics issues in Yamanaka Yuzu's thesis.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kakashi can see Fuuko's face hardening, her hands tightening on the set of armour she had found.

"Fuuko?" Her body stiffens at his words and she turns away from him, picking up the needle to alter the armour better. "Why don't you come and sit at the table to fix it?"

"It's fine. Too lazy to move," she says though her voice is so tight that it sounds like she had to strain to speak.

Kakashi purses his lips and tilts his head to his sister. He can smell the panic and desperation in the air, so palpable and thick that it almost chokes him.

What is it that he's missing? Why is she scared? Shisui should be here, he thinks. Shisui always handled emotions better amongst the four of them. Should he summon Bakushou?

His hand tightens around the handle of the kunai that he was packing and he can feel the metal bend beneath his fingers.

No running from this, Kakashi tells himself inwardly and he stands, taking a breath before walking to her.

"What is it?" He asks, crouching in front of her. "What is wrong, Fuuko?"

The sharp stench of fear spikes at his words. Her eyes dilate, watching him intently.

Is it his face? Kakashi tugs his face mask down and sits on the ground, trying to make himself smaller than her so as not to loom over her. Or is it his voice? His heart lurches at that thought. Why would she be afraid of his voice? He hadn't done anything…

 _Are you afraid of me?_ He signs to her.

Fuuko hesitates but her body relaxes infinitesimally at his signs. Pulling her hand up, Kakashi can see the slight tremble in it and the way she slowly runs through the anbu hand signs like she needs to think about it.

 _No, not you._

Just to prove his point, he asks again, "Are you sure?"

She flinches, her body tense and ready to flee or fight.

"It's not.. Not your fault," she whispers hoarsely. Curling her hand around his forearm in spite of the almost violent trembling, she continues, "I dreamt about.. About that fight."

"That fight?"

"In the Root HQ," her words so quiet that he barely picks it up. His heart sinks further. She knows that he didn't have a choice right? Does she not trust him anymore? Kakashi wants to refuse that possibility, that actions that he couldn't control has made the one person he trusted to not turn on him, not trust him anymore. And the worst part of it is that he can't fault her for it. Regardless of whether he had wanted to kill her or not, he had attempted it, he had forced her into a situation to kill or be killed. She would have died for him had he not egged her.

"I didn't-" he starts, trying to find the words to make this better. Kakashi knows _nothing_ can. Trauma is tricky but fixable, trust once broken can never be regained. "I didn't-"

Her fingers dig into his arm. "It's _not_ _your_ fault," she spits vehemently. "It's not that I don't _trust_ you, okay? It's just your voice… and hair colour." Fuuko pulls him closer and Kakashi shuffles forward letting her guide his arms into a hug.

 _Are you okay with this?_ He taps on her elbow and she nods.

"I trust you," she says and lifts her head to lean on his shoulder. "I _trust_ you."

Kakashi wonders if she's telling it to him or herself, but if she's able to separate it. Maybe he can fix this.

"Well then it's a good thing we'll be changing our voices and hair colours when we enter kumo," Kakashi says wryly in a voice a pitch higher than his usual. He hadn't been planning on changing his voice, but if his voice sets her off, then it'd be better to distance himself as far as he can from that memory until it's not as fresh.

-/-/-/-

Genma sips his tea, savouring the bitterness as it rolls over his tongue. Bitter like his feelings, he thinks. It's only been less than a month since everything happened. Since Kakashi's defection, since Genma was brought into T&I for aiding and abetting traitors. He had gotten off easy as Ibiki and Anko had been working with him to help Kakashi escape, but still that hadn't assuaged the suspicion of being a traitor. Traitor by association is apparently a thing. Never mind that he's been cleared by T&I.

In the end, hiding behind his mask in the Anbu headquarters even in his free time was better than staying at home or eating in one of the restaurants like he had. How Anko had lasted all these years from the testy suspicion, baffles him.

"They're probably going to merge squads," Raido said to him, plopping on the free seat beside him, setting a plate of mochi between them. Raido, who had a Uchiha and a Hatake on his squad has ended up being benched, just like him. Not for Badger though. Badger, who he still didn't see as a teammate, had been going on missions with other squads. He didn't know if it meant anything. Fuuko hadn't liked Badger from the beginning and it hadn't been a superficial, I don't know you, sort of dislike. The way she refused to give Badger her back was deeply troubling.

The official records say that Fuuko had gone unstable after _that_ mission. The official records say that Uchihas had killed each other after two different parties on clan heir fought. The official records say that Fuuko had killed Shimura Danzo.

He wonders if Kakashi was right. Genma shakes himself mentally, remembering the words he had said to Kakashi then.

 _If you go down this road, it won't be easy to turn back._

Where had the loyalty instilled in him since birth gone? Genma pushes his mask up slightly to stuff one of the mochi into his mouth.

"Merge or split?" he asks Raido who only shrugs.

"Does it matter?" Raido replies. And it really doesn't matter. Either way, they would get watchers and be suspected constantly for being a traitor. The village he swore to protect hasn't been this narrow minded.

"Maybe I'll get promoted and be placed as your captain," Genma jokes.

"Or maybe… you two are going to be axed from anbu," one of the masks lounging near them snickers.

Genma tilts his head at the speaker, noting the captain marks on the front of the speaker's uniform.

"Or maybe you'll be demoted," Chicken quips back.

"It's not like you like any of them," the captain sneers.

"I don't, but at least I can keep my opinions professional where _you_ clearly can't. Isn't that right Hamster?" Chicken sneers

"It's not a _hamster!_ It's a _rat!_ " Hamster slams the table with his fist. "Maybe you're defending him because because you're a traitor too."

Chicken rolls his head. "Whatever you say, _Hamster._ "

"You-!"

"That's enough!" Panther yells as she enters the lounge just as Hamster rose to attack Chicken. The lounge falls silent with the Anbu colonel's presence. "Hamster, Chicken. Both of you are going to volunteer for three weeks of night patrols. See if this reminds you of your rank and the _need f_ or your professionalism."

"And Bear." She turns to Genma and immediately, he stands, placing his fist over his heart with a bow. "The Jounin Commander wants to see you in his office _now._ "

"Yes ma'am!" He replies and leaps out of the window, bouncing across the anbu district and then into the proper village district.

Was there something that Inoichi had picked up from his mind? Genma wonders if his plans of helping Kakashi and Fuuko escape had been revealed in the mindwalk. Was Inoichi part of _them_ too? Genma swallows a sigh and tries to backtrack his thinking. It wouldn't do him any good for splitting his allies into 'not ally' ally and actual allies.

At least whatever part of the plan Kakashi had revealed to him had been compartmentalized. Raidou isn't likely to be implicated if Genma is found to be guilty. And if he _is_ found guilty, he wonders what kind of punishment he is going to be sacked with. _If he isn't executed,_ that is.

He coats his hand with chakra and slides down the administration building, slinging himself towards tower A where the Jounin Commander's office is located. Shikaku is alone in his office, reading some documents when he slips in.

"Sir," he greets in a crouch before Shikaku's desk, the way all shinobis do when they defer to their superiors.

"Bear," Shikaku greets. He activates the security seal on the side of the table.

Genma's breath freezes in his throat. The pulse of Shikaku's chakra gliding over as the security seal settles. He hadn't noticed Inoichi in the corner, but perhaps he could be excused, judging from the slithering of Shikaku's shadow, Shikaku had hidden Inoichi intentionally.

"Sir?" Genma asks. The hair on the back of his neck are standing as Inoichi takes the seat beside the window and crosses a leg like he's there for tea or something.

Is Inoichi in this too? Wasn't he Fuuko's genin sensei?

"Shiranui Genma, you are a friend of Hatake Fuuko and Hatake Kakashi. Is this right?"

Genma snaps his head up. He knows this tone. Denying wouldn't do him any good, Shikaku already knew before asking him. Admitting to anything would be just as bad. Shikaku rolls the scroll close and clasps his hands, leaning his weight on his elbows.

Slowly, taking his Anbu mask off, Genma stares defiantly at Shikaku. He knew this might happen. It was a chance he took in spite of the chances Kakashi gave him to walk away. If they are taking him in for Fuuko's location, then the joke's on them. Nobody in the plan knew.

He lets his lips curl smugly at that thought. "What of it?"

"You and Gai were part of helping the Hatake's get away from Konoha, is that right?"

"Ahh, did they actually get away?" Genma returns the question. Truth is, after everything happened, he didn't actually know if they had fled successfully or died in the process.

Inoichi shifts in his seat but Genma forces himself not to turn his head.

"We know _everything,_ Genma," Inoichi tells him.

He turns and raises an eyebrow at Inoichi, trying to decipher the unsaid message. Or were they-

Genma stop short at that thought.

"You are _testing_ me." A sigh from Shikaku confirms his suspicions and Genma stands, putting a senbon his mouth, chewing on it as he thinks. "I'm not going to sell them out," he bites out after a pause.

"No, we didn't think you or Gai would. Not after the lengths you two had gone through," Inochi says.

Genma forced himself to continue breathing, trying not to break the senbon in his mouth. They tested him even though they had doubted that he would have sold the Hatakes out. They knew from the start that Gai and him had participated. That would make them most likely the ringleaders? _Nara_ Shikaku.

Of course. Kakashi would have gotten help from the one person that is most likely to succeed. But how? Kakashi hadn't been close to Shikaku. No, it must have been Inoichi who asked to help. Inoichi would have asked Shikaku. The plan, though rather simple all in all, had been complex with the number of deceptions required for all those helping. The fact that who played what part was unknown to all made it harder for a leak to occur, like Shikaku had planned for such a possibility. Yet, he's here, in Shikaku's office, being tested.

"There was a leak." Genma's words less of a statement but more of an question.

The seriousness in both of his superior's eyes made the bitterness whelm up at the base of his throat.

Genma turns to face Shikaku. "Who?"

"That's exactly what we want to know." Shikaku sighs. He tosses a folder to Genma. "A leak originated from the anbu sector. Not directly relating to Hatake's escape but closely related. _That_ is the list of our suspects."

The folder has more than twenty profiles and Genma knows some of these. Trusts them without doubt. His eyes pause on Namiashi Raidou's page.

 _Trusts them without a doubt._ The voice at the back of his head repeats.

"Genma, Fuuko-chan said that you were the most impartial person she ever met. Which is why we are assigning you to investigate this list of names and find out where the leak is from," Inoichi says.

What if Raidou turns out… Genma hardens his thoughts and swallows whatever doubts churning in him. Just because he's in this folder doesn't mean he _is_ the leak.

"Understood."

He seals the folder in the hidden seal on his anbu vest and as he makes his way out of the window, he hears Shikaku calls out to him. "I don't need to tell you that the list is classified from anyone that isn't in this room, right?"

Genma pulls the senbon out of his mouth and replaces his mask. " _Obviously._ "

-/-/-/-

Stretching his arms out, Shisui yawns as he shuffles around the kitchen, raising his morning cup as one of kids dashes across for another rice refill. He grabs Chinatsu by the back of her collar when she nearly falls on her face with her rice bowl.

"Don't run in the kitchen," he warns then pours a cup of coffee.

At the dining table, Hira and Komaru bicker over who gets the last pickle while Kanmuri stealthily eats it. He should probably go and stop the quarrel before it ends up in a fist fight.

Sasuke leans on his hand, half-asleep as he slowly eats his breakfast. He's going to be late for academy if he doesn't hurry. Shisui runs a weary hand down his face. It's too early for this.

"Hira-chan, Komaru-kun, you two-" The words die in his mouth as the door slides open.

Itachi is taller now and tanned. He's also very grimy and disheveled like he had hurried home, but he's alive.

"Nii-san!" Sasuke yells. He hops off the chair, running into his brother's outstretched arms.

"Otouto." Itachi smiles. "I'm home."

* * *

 **Author Notes:**

Sorry this took awhile. My dog passed away in feb and life happened. Tried to sit down and write this finish but couldn't get into it. I also made a timeline of the events so far on my tumblr, but ffn doesn't let us link, so it's on Luna-orlha, tagged with this fic's name.

Not sure if I mentioned this, but

 **Fun fact:** Itachi and Shisui was never meant to have that big of a role in this fic.

 **Question:** What animal mask would you like to have if you were an Anbu, and which would you definitely not want?

* * *

 **Beta-ed by denilmo**


	20. The Fool and the Devil : Part 4

Instead of returning to the Anbu headquarters, Genma slips through the window and stands in the middle of his apartment. _How rotten is Konoha?_ He wonders. He tilts his head, taking sight of the picture of Raidou and him on the wall, his hand reaching up to grip the seal where he had stored the files.

 _Namiashi Raidou._

"I trust him," he says out loud into the now darkened room. The words comforting him no more than it did, churning in his brain. Raidou would never betray Konoha. His loyalty to the village is more steadfast than his.

Refusing to think of it, Genma changes into his jounin uniform and stalks to the jounin training grounds. He starts off with katas, then sparring with an invisible opponent.

Raidou would _never_ betray Konoha. He has seen Raidou make such a decision over and over again that the very idea of him being a traitor is unthinkable. Genma knows this as certain as the sun would rise from the east.

He punches the air furiously, spinning around to land a kick on the tree trunk. The wood splinters beneath his sandals and he stands there, shoulders heaving.

But what if it _is_ Raidou? What if he was that good of a spy? Raidou's an infiltration specialist. He has seen Raidou switch his persona as easily as breathing.

No, that's not right. Something's not right. What is it?

Genma starts the beginning pose of the Burning Leaf katas.

Strength in Unity, he repeats the old academy prose in time with each kata. Power for protection, wings from will of the fire. He leaps and strikes his leg out then takes a slow breath, feeling more stable than he had been hours ago.

"What is it, Shisui?" he asks, dropping onto the grass next to a water bottle he had brought.

"I was starting to think that you couldn't sense me the whole time. And you were as sensing-blind as Mongoose said you were," Shisui jokes and steps into the light.

"Che- I'm not _that_ blind," Genma grumbles at the old team joke. It's been so long since they had sat around and made jabs at each other faults.

"So you say."

"You and Fuuko are just irritatingly good." Genma snorts. Until now, he still couldn't figure out how she could compress her chakra to make some kind of echolocation. Even Kakashi hadn't been able to do it. Although the blond brat had gotten closer than he had. He quells the sigh and the urge to punch that annoying smirk on Shisui's face. If it weren't for the fact that he knew that Shisui still had difficulty maneuvering around simple corners, he might have thrown Shisui a few surprise punches.

Instead he pulls a senbon out of his pack and sticks it between his teeth. "So what do you need?"

"Wellll…" Shisui drawls, sitting on the empty patch of grass next to him. "Itachi-kun's home! And he hasn't seen you in a while, neither has Sasuke nor Naruto, soooo…"

Genma chuckles at the brat's name. "Haven't seen Naruto! That's the funniest thing I've heard all day."

Right now Naruto would be with Yamato, halfway to sage knows where. He runs a hand through his sweaty hair and ties his headband back on his head.

"I don't see what's so funny about that," Shisui says hesitantly.

Genma shakes his head. "I'll tell you later." He stretches his arms, loosening his joints. Now that he has stopped training, he can feel the bite in the January's evening air. He speeds up his chakra circulation, letting his body temperature raise up more.

But what if Raidou _is_ the traitor? Or worse, what if Shikaku was a traitor too? Was Shikaku pitting him against Raidou? Shikaku is the Jounin Commander, his will… it should be the will of the Hokage… _right?_

He exhales, watching the cloud of air float and dissipate into the evening sky.

"Where are we going?" Genma asks after several minutes of padding dutifully behind Shisui.

"Home." Shisui eyes him. "I _told_ you that Itachi just returned."

Genma rolls his head, forcing the lackadaisical persona to take over. His shoulders slouch as he dips his hands into his pocket, yawning so widely that his senbon nearly falls out. "You should have just dragged him along with you if you wanted me to see him."

"He really did literally just return home this morning," Shisui says reproachfully.

Perhaps Itachi was injured and Shisui wanted to keep it quiet? He couldn't help but wonder if Itachi had found out about his clan. The weight of the... _Massacre_ must have shocked the young genius. Still, he couldn't see why Shisui would want him to see Itachi. He had never been particularly close to Itachi. What was he supposed to do? Offer his condolences?

His feet pause in front of the gates, still empty of the guards that used to be there. Genma didn't think he would never get used to the empty streets and silent houses. It had creeped him out the first time he walked Shisui back, and even on his fourth time through, it still does.

"What are the plans for the rest of the district?" Genma asks. Walking after sundown in this district is even more eerie than the last three times. He could hear the sound of the snow crunching underneath his sandals echoing and he isn't even making _that_ much sound. He hunches his shoulders, following closely behind Shisui feeling very much like a character in one of Aoba's horror books.

"Now that Itachi is back, we can have the nominee fight. But Sayami doesn't want the clan head title anyway." Shisui shrugs.

"The nominee fight? Oh. You Uchihas still follow the old Warring Clan ascension rites, don't you?" Shisui glances at him with surprise and Genma tilts his senbon in a sheepish smile. "Shiranui isn't a big clan but we were once big enough to have Clan Head ascension fights in our history. Not that it was continued after they joined Konoha."

Shisui swings open the heavy wooden gate, letting him step through before locking it. "Well, we don't fight to the death now if that's what you're wondering." Shisui's voice is drier than Suna's desert.

"I'd guess that much. They wouldn't be pleased if they lost another Uchiha to some rite."

Shisui slips his sandals off and tucks it into a labelled cubby before taking out a pair of guest slippers for Genma which he gratefully wears.

"The kids are all off to bed already," Shisui tells him as he slides the kitchen door open. A petite Uchiha female eyes him, her cup halting in mid-air.

"Who is this?" she asks, eyes not moving from where he stood. Her hand twitches like she's about to cover all the paperwork set in front of Itachi and her.

"Ahh, Shiranui-san," Itachi nods at him and offers the seat next to him. "Sayami-san, this is Shiranui Genma, Fuuko-san's teammate. Shiranui-san, this is Uchiha Sayami."

Sayami, as in Dancing Devil Sayami?

Genma couldn't help but stare at the brunette in awe. During the war, he had gotten front seats in the trenches, watching her fight against the Iwa-nins. She had taken so many Iwa-nins and so quickly that day. In his memory she had seemed so much larger and fiercer than this woman in front of him that he found it difficult to imagine her being Dancing Devil Sayami.

"The Fuinjutsu Specialist?"

Genma glances at Shisui. Fuinjutsu Specialist? He did know fuinjutsu, having been taught by Yondaime before his death, but he would hardly call himself a _specialist._

"Yep, the one and only!" Shisui grins and flops into a chair, tugging him to take the seat Itachi offered. Shisui turns to him. "We need you to help us look at Sasuke's seal."

"Wait, what? Sasuke has a seal?" Genma jerks at Shisui's words.

"You think he could help?" She frowns. "I've never heard of Shiranui-san doing fuinjutsu, let alone specialist work."

"Wait a minute. My skill is based on a very narrow and limited scope," Genma interjects, uneasy. The Space-time field hasn't been particularly useful unless he could replicate Yondaime and Niidaime's reflexes, any seal on any person would more likely be out of his scope than in. Though his words seemed to fall on deaf ears as they continued talking over him.

"Genma was trained by Yondaime-sama himself," Shisui says, quirking an eyebrow at Sayami.

"That wouldn't necessarily mean that he's good at it."

"By the sage of six paths! My scope is _space-time._ Not… whatever it is on Sasuke-"

Shisui shakes his head. "No, but he's the next best option if we don't want the Elder Council interfering with his seal."

"I don't understand. Why can't you ask the Hoka-" Genma starts.

" _Danzo_ sealed Sasuke-kun." Sayami bites out, her lips curling in disgust. "Surely you don't trust them after what they did to your friend, do you? Not to mention that Sasuke's seal originally was supposed to be dealt by the fuinjutsu corps." She sniffs and drains her cup. "I can't tell if it's incompetence or sabotage."

She waves her hand tiredly. "Whatever it is, deal with it. If Shiranui-san can't then I'll have to lean onto Haruno-dono. As much as I much rather not, we can't let Sasuke-kun suffer." Sayami stands and scopes the paperwork in a pile then pulls out two thin folders for Itachi. "Don't forget to sign the clan tax form."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Itachi says as she slips out.

"So does _anyone_ want to tell me what in the sage of six paths is _going on here?_ " Genma asks the moment Sayami shuts the door. They stare at each other. Itachi wearily flipping through the folder.

Genma is tired of all this bullshit. They are shinobis, not some B grade actors from some kabuki drama for sage sake.

"Sasuke-kun was kidnapped by Shimura Danzo. In order to prevent Mikoto-obasan from killing him, he placed a seal on the base of his spine. Not that it stopped Mikoto-obasan from killing him anyway."

Genma heaves a sigh. "Not that I don't want to help, but you _do_ know that my field isn't exactly typically applied on human skin. Which means I probably know next to nothing."

"Well-" Shisui exchanged glances with Itachi and drooped further in his seat. "Sayami-san had asked the fuinjutsu corps to remove it. They told her that they couldn't remove it, but had altered it to be inactive. Which means that it shouldn't have an effect on Sasuke-kun."

Genma could see where they were coming from. If they can't even trust the fuinjutsu corps then who can they trust? Fucking nobody, that's who. Genma rolls his senbon in his mouth then tugs his hitai-te off, scratching the back of his head angrily. "See here. I can't make promises."

He takes a good look at the two Uchihas. With all the shit slugging going around, Raidou had suggested taking a step back from the Uchihas so he hadn't dropped by as often as he would have liked.

He should have.

There are dark circles around Shisui's eyes and a tremor in his right hand. Genma pulls Shisui's hand out, running a green lit hand down his arm. Physically, there's nothing wrong with Shisui. So it's all psychosomatic.

"Just take a look at it, ok?" Shisui says. Genma only nods, because what else can he do?

"But that's not why Shisui made you come here," Itachi says for the first time since Sayami left. Tugging his sleeve up, Itachi places a finger on a storage seal inked on the underside of his wrist. A sealed scroll appears, dark red ends marking it as classified information.

Genma unseals it. The coarse paper rolling in his hand as he pulls it open. His breath hitches at the Hatake mon and he can't help snapping his head to Itachi. Itachi's mission had gone on much longer than he expected. Itachi's _official_ mission had gone on longer than the administration had expected, but it had given him a plausible deniability.

Relief floods him that he can hear the buzzing in his ears.

They managed to get out. Hatake Kakashi had succeeded in his mission. At least all his efforts had not been for naught.

But Yamato didn't arrive. Then where is Yamato and Naruto?

-/-/-/-

Kakashi watches Fuuko brush her wig out, and adjusts the fake flesh over her cheekbones, fingers running over the light scarring on her bottom cheek.

"Imouto?" he calls out, pitching his voice higher than usual. His voice box will dislike him for a while, but for now, the fact that his sister doesn't flinch at his voice makes it all better. She turns, eyes widening at him. One of his lesser known skills were infiltration because the chidori made it so difficult to hide.

"Kakashi?" she asks with a wry smile, touching the purple streaks down his eyes. "Couldn't you have taken a skin coloured concealer for your scars instead?"

She called him Kakashi instead of nii-san, she hadn't done that before. "Maa- I'm not sure who this Kakashi is, but my name is Sukea."

She shakes her head. "You look and sound so… different."

Which is the entire point. They wouldn't get very far as their own selves. Kakashi pokes the fake scar on her cheek, an oil splatter mimic. "Like you are any different." He flattens her face between his hands and pinches her cheeks. Even though he knows that she's his sister, the higher cheekbones made her look so different that it was strange. Along with the brown dyed hair and green contacts, anyone searching for them would be hard-pressed to recognise them.

"Nii-san!"

"Good good, the fake flesh survived." He grins and ruffles her hair. "Do you have our cover story and personas ready?"

Fuuko rubs her cheeks with a pout. The familiarity of that pout makes something inside him ache. "I'll be the rude and loud cousin, who is bringing _you_ home to marry my sister. We are going to head up to Kumo and fulfill Shikaku's orders, _right?_ "

"Then I guess we'll be playing opposite personalities and I'll be the quiet, shy one?" Pulling out a journal and brandishing a brush, he writes on the book in elegant calligraphy that almost no one but his sister and Minato-sensei would recognise. "A sparrow. A branch in spring. It flies."

"A quiet, shy one that apparently writes bad poetry," Fuuko mutters.

"I'm appalled!" He gasps, clutching the journal to his chest, "My poetry is breathtaking."

"A moron. Thinking he's amazing. An idiot." She says then steps from the mirror, picking up the sheets of paper on the table behind her and thrusts a sheet into his face. "So here's the plan. We're going to go through Nikkounoki Village, hit Miraitoki-Gai."

"A disbeliever. Must bestow enlightenment. Believe it."

"You are dead to me," she deadpans.

"Yes, yes." Kakashi takes the paper, unwilling to test how much she's recovered from her… ordeal. At least her bickering with him is familiar and almost like pre-lab mission Fuuko. Maybe this mission, this _defection_ might help to regain some form of normalcy between them. The irony. "Nara Miyako is our contact in Kumo. And since she's a merchant, we should probably be selling something," he muses.

"Tea perhaps. That's light enough."

Kakashi shakes his head, remembering the fine kimono in one of the boxes. A clothing merchant wouldn't need to carry his goods around, they would wear it to showcase their works. "A kimono merchant would be better." He watches a look slither across his sister's face, the same strange look that she had been having more and more frequently since Orochimaru. Even her mannerisms change ever so slightly when it appears. Unwilling to delve into his theories, he sticks it deep in his mind, next to Otou-san's suicide. "We wouldn't need to carry anything special," Kakashi points out.

She nods but says nothing else. Her silence stirring the fear in him.

He won't think about it. He _won't_ think about it.

'A rainbow. On a plain cloth. A wasted stitch,' he scribbles over the book, rapidly filling the journal up with bad poetry.

Fuuko heaves a large sigh. "I wish. I much rather have Onee-sama marry Taichi-san, but Hitori-kun is the next oldest male. In order to make sure the business stays with the main branch, he has to marry in."

"Sukea," he interjects, with an eye smile. "Kishuku Sukea, since Miyako's undercover name is Kishuku Miaka."

"So I'll be Kishuku... Akiko." She turns back to the table, completely missing the start at her choice of name. Fuuko had always picked Kazea or Kazemi for her undercover name.

He swallows shallowly, tucking his worries deep inside him and says nothing.

-/-/-/

Genma had always known that the things they did in Anbu were not quite morally ethical. Regardless of whether it was ethical or not, Anbu had always put their comrades first before the mission, even if the rule had indicated otherwise. The Anbus were proud and fiercely loyal to their own squad. They lived, endured, and died together.

How Shinichiro Mizuki ever survived long enough with such ruthlessness is beyond whatever Genma could even imagine. How could he even _think_ that suffocating his own squad mate for the mission's success could even be an acceptable act? At least he's gone now, retired into teaching. Whether that is for better or for worse, he isn't very sure.

He shakes his head and sets Mizuki's folder aside. If a man could even think that killing his own squad mate would ensure the success of the mission, then he could very well reason selling his own comrade.

Genma stares at the four folders. Out of the stack of profiles that Shikaku had given him, he had shortlisted four of the suspicious or most probable traitors: Shinichiro Mizuki, Yamamoto Hyou, Nara Ensui and Namiashi Raidou.

No matter how much he wants to dismiss Raidou from the list, there have been some flag raising things in his classified records. Could Raidou be the traitor? Could he be completely assured that Raidou was loyal? Disbelief colours his thoughts. No, only the foolish would recklessly be unwavering in their trust. Raidou's actions based on the records had cast doubt.

Genma seals the folders into the seal on his vest, erasing any evidence of anyone that might have entered the archives. He seallessly casts a henge on himself, camouflaging himself as a spot on the wall. It's funny how he's using his assassination specialisation to infiltrate the very division he works for.

An Anbu patrol enters the archive five minutes later and Genma slides out, keeping his chakra tightly compressed. Genma slips into one of the empty training grounds, sheds his Anbu gear, then drops his henge. He stares up at the blue sky. The bright blue sky, a contradiction to the feelings warring in him.

"Fuck everything." Genma stuck his favoured senbon into his mouth, chewing it rather viciously. "Fuck _everything._ " He wanted to go to the bar and drink himself into a stupor or find Gai for a spar, but Gai isn't in Konoha at the moment and frustrated as he is, there are a lot of things that still needed to be doing.

Adopting a languorous posture, Genma saunters pass the outlying houses that dotted near the training grounds. His facade never breaking stride even as he passes through the housing district and finally into the commercial part of Konoha. He stills for a brief moment, hiding his hesitation by adjusting his senbon. The crowd mills around him, genin corp shinobis leaping off the rooftops armed with their stack of missives, Anbu patrols hidden in spots of the rooftops, watching for disturbance. A group of rowdy children runs pass him, laughing riotously.

By leaving his closest friend on the highly possible traitor's list, he is protecting _this_.

Genma swallows hard, eyes averted from where the Anbu stood and makes his way to the nearest snack shop. The takoyaki burns in his mouth. His eyes water as he tries to wolf them down and his resolve hardens.


End file.
